Analysing Album covers & Digipacks

By James Hargreaves

Catfish and the Bottlemen

Catfish and the Bottlemen are a British rock band that formed in Llandudno, North Wales in 2007. They have released an album that reached number 10 in the UK album chart.

Origin: Llandudno (2007)

Members: Van McCann, Benji Blakeway,Bob Hall, Johnny Bond, Billy Bibby, Jon Barr

Albums: The Balcony, Kathleen And The Other Three, The Beautiful Decay EP

Genres: Alternative rock, Post-punk revival

Record labels: Communion Records,Island Records

Catfish and the BottlemenDEBUT ALBUM The Balcony 2014

The genre of the band is rock, and the colours of the album (black and white) are those we would often associate with this genre of music. The band members also wear a lot of dark clothing adding to their this style.

The art work of the album shows two headless bodies (one male one female) reaching into one another's trousers. The artwork could be representing the youth of today. Seeing as the band’s predominant audience is teenagers this style would appeal to them.

The bands name and album name can be seen in the top left hand corner of the cover, this helps people looking through CD’s to find their album as it is at the top and easy to find. It also helps the album art to be the main focus and add to the simplicity of the design.

The back of the album cover keeps with the simplistic design of the artwork from the front. All of the tracks are listed in the centre in capital letters with equal spacing between each name. This allows each name to be easily read and seen so that the listener can remember the name of each song having read each one clearly.

The record label and barcode are placed in the middle at the bottom of the case, they are also in black and white keeping to the style of the album cover. All other credits are placed at the bottom of the cover in a much smaller text as not to distract from the simplicity of the design.

Overall the album cover has a very simple style and isn’t very eye catching or have much to look at. Perhaps the designers were considering that this was the band’s debut album and they were following the style of ‘less is more’. Even so this design does capture the bands look and feel effectively.

Catfish and the BottlemenDEBUT ALBUM The Balcony 2014