Friday, 5 July 2013

Task 2 - Album cover analysis - Mumford & Sons



The band Mumford & Sons pose as shop window mannequins for the cover of their album ‘Sigh no more’. The buildings look to be something in a quaint English town with vintage shops. This idea of posing as mannequins hints that they are new, a shop window is usually somewhere where items are advertised to the public .  Their instruments play a key role in the cover, suggesting that the band members play instruments and that they create all of the music themselves.
Compared to the whole CD cover they appear to be only minor factors in terms of scale, their faces are not clear which implies that they don’t want their music to sell for their image but the music that they create which is emphasised by the instruments in the shot. The actual composition of the show however, draws us directly to them. The white shop that they’re in the window of makes them stand out because it frames them, but also because their clothing and the buildings either side contrasts with the white, the viewer will be immediately drawn to them as their figures stand out so clearly. The use of the colour white implies innocence because white is usually associated with pureness, perhaps because they were a new band at the time and they’re unique. Their clothing could be considered to be similar to what someone would wear if they lived in the British countryside, emphasising the fact that they are British.
The album cover doesn’t give too much away about the band, nor does it immediately give itself away to a specific genre, but we gather that they are not your usual pop/rock band, they seem more like indie/folk band and I feel that the cover really demonstrates this; it’s quite unique and unusual much like their music. They’re not a generic pop band so they make their album covers this way so that when people see them they know that their music will be unique too. By looking at this cover I think that you can grasp the type of music that will be included in the album, especially as we can see the instruments such as a Cello and violin and other string instruments.
The writing of the band name and album title is clearly displayed and the font is very formal, this stands out against the white pavement as the background so that it is clearly visible to potential buyers.
The back of the cover shows a single shop window, the same shop that they are in on the front, but is not the window that they appear in.  It’s one of the windows that we see upstairs. The window is slightly open suggesting that they this album will open them up to world as they are new artists. They weren’t new artist in terms of how long they have been a band but this album was the first album that really got them noticed. The white theme continues on to the back as well, making both the window and the songs on the album stand out as they are the most important factors. It also includes a bar code and small print stating copyright regulations and the also the logos of the record labels.

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