Looks can be deceiving. Just because an album cover features a woman throwing
Gozerian-style bolts from her eyes doesn't mean the music matches the image. In the case of Lobisomem's new record, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
It's ironic, too; Lobisomem is Portuguese for "werewolf," so you'd expect music you wouldn't want to jog to under a full moon. But
Onze Pedras is actually a collection of chill, if rather bouncy, electronica. There are some surging beats and lots of clatter, akin to Caribou's work back when he was still known as Manitoba.
Read my review for the album at Verbicide.
As a little bonus in the spirit of Halloween, read on past the jump to see a few of my favorite frightening album covers.
Richard James has the kind of face that peers out of closets and could give boogeymen goosebumps. Again, looks can be deceiving: As Aphex Twin, his knob-twiddling has resulted in some of the warmest, most ethereal electronica you've ever heard. Then again, he's also responsible for
this.
Halloween wouldn't be Halloween without a Jack-o'-lantern. But Sonic Youth's cover for
Bad Moon Rising reminds me of the best '80s slasher covers - the ones you saw as a kid while strolling through the video store and still remember to this day, even if you never saw the movie.
One of my favorite songs of all time, and certainly an October classic, has a brilliant, simple cover. It's just a still from the 1931 version of
Dracula, with a woman enveloped on all sides by the shadow of a demon's wings.
Like Richard James, Nick Cave is a naturally scary-looking man (no offense meant to either of them, by the way). Pretty much any Cave cover looks like a bad dream, since Cave himself has a menacing, wolf-like glare. But for the latest Grinderman cover, they decided to go for the real thing.
Everybody knows "Blister in the Sun." "Country Death Song?" Somehow not as popular. The cover of
Hallowed Ground looks like an exhibit gathering dust in an anthropology museum's basement, and hints at the much darker material the Femmes were capable of.
Every Dead Can Dance song sounds like it was recorded in a crypt. But the cover of their third album appears to actually depict one. I like to think this isn't a found image; it's actually a photo of one of the band members on a typical Wednesday evening.
