El Cuarto De Bao , The Toilet - Antonio Lpez Garcia, 1966

El Cuarto de Baño , The Toilet   -  Antonio López Garcia, 1966

Spanish, b.1936-

Oil on canvas,  228 x 119 cm.

Never quit

Back in 2013, Sufjan Stevens took to Tumblr to trash the typography on the cover of Savages’ debut album, Silence Yourself. “The very cool SAVAGES has allowed a very uncool typographical blunder on its LP cover,” he wrote. “Who the Fraggle designed this?” Three years later, Savages’ Jehnny Beth has responded, with comments made on her Beats 1 radio show “Start Making Sense,” airing tonight. When a listener requested that she play “Impossible Soul,” from Stevens’ 2010 album The Age of Adz, she refused, saying that not only would it not make sense to play a 25-minute-long song on the radio, but also that Stevens was more or less banned from her show because of his remarks about the artwork.

Co Partnership |  Sydney, Australia

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968

One more thing about this album: the awkward blatancy of an ALL CAPS manifesto (with line breaks) on the cover is, on one hand, a bold move (typographically), and, on the other hand, an indication of restraint and self-possession (compared to the explicit cover design of most punk/rock albums; compared to the explicit cover design of my albums, always screaming for attention). Case in point: the inherent democracy of ONE CASE (every letter equally measured) forgoes the political hierarchy of upper/lower class. Am I reading too much into this? The band has somehow achieved mystery and modesty in brash exclamations about “silence” (resonance of Buddhism?) rendered via typographical faux pas (all caps=yelling). (What would E.E. Cummings do?) Context is everything: punk sermons situated beside a muted black and white photo (evoking the band in stillness, slightly pissed off) provoke visual tension and/or situational irony, a reflection of the band’s sound and style (silence vs. noise). Restrained Aggression. Aggressive Restraint. Clean lines, crisp utility, minimalism, functionality. These are also the qualities of a good font, Helvetica being the supreme deity, and Futura Medium a minor prophet. (Times New Roman may as well be the air we breathe.) I recall in writing workshops the constant admonishment to allow your prose to disappear, so that the narrative became an “illiterate experience,” transcending the text itself, magnifying in ether (the magnitude of all things communicated by nothingness, i.e. silence). To accomplish this on the page (or in a song, or on an album cover) is one thing; to live it is nothing less than enlightenment. Thank you, Savages, for the urgent all caps homily (to “recompose” ourselves in silence). I will never forgive your awkward italics, but I will forever sing your anthems to my children’s children.