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Business News Labels & Publishers
Father John Misty vinyl packaging warps records within
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 13 February 2015
Sub Pop has joined the great vinyl packaging mis-step hall of fame (a listicle I’m sure will be available to you on several other websites by the time you’ve read this) with its “ambitious” artwork for the new Father John Misty album, ‘I Love You, Honeybear’.
The carefully designed sleeve for the double-vinyl release folds out to reveal a pop-up scene featuring various characters in a bar that’s on fire. That’s ‘pop-up’ in the sense we understood the term when we were children, rather than a shop in East London with limited consumer appeal selling socks made out of vegetables or something.
The label explains: “In our efforts to replicate the ‘wow factor’ of such legendary album packages as the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’ zipper cover by Andy Warhol, we wound up accidentally replicating the ‘defect factor’ of the same. In short, the extra, bulging thickness of the pop-up art in the Father John Misty jacket creates a lump that, when the LPs are sealed and packed, pushes into the LPs, causing the vinyl to warp and making that handsome, painstakingly and expensively produced jacket an elaborate record-destroying device. This oversight, and any attendant suffering, is our fault, and we are very sorry. We promise to be less ambitious in the future”.
So that’s good news about being less ambitious. As the local businessman who was selected to give a speech at my university graduation said: “Only ever do things you’re certain you can succeed at. Don’t aim too high”.
Those who received bent albums will have them replaced in due course.
