Specific Album Art/Digipak Analysis - (The Secret Life...Two Lectures by Nick Cave)

The Secret Life Of The Love Song & The Flesh Made Word

Two Lectures By Nick Cave

Nick Cave is an Australian musician best known as the frontman of the critically acclaimed alternative rock band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Other than containing the CD, this digipak is far from the conventional. It resonates an autobiographical book, with pages displaying extracts from the two lectures on the CD along with black and white photos of the musician. 

Front Cover

The front cover is a black and white mid-shot of Cave staring analytically at a record. This striking image may be representative of his philosophical nature and relates to his 'two lectures' featured on the CD, in which the artist delves into the complexity of the 'love song' and explores how religion helped to influence his writing. Furthermore, the fact that the CD is interspersed with five examples of 'true love songs' by Cave himself, conveys to the audience how 'love lies within the music' - perhaps this would explain why Cave is seemingly searching the record on the front panel. Additionally, the classic black and white photo appears as if it's a cinematic still taken from a romantic film, creating a 'motif' for the artist as the theme of love and mystery are concepts explored in great depth on the album. The key light is hard/focused through the centre of his face and on his hand, whereas the rest of his form and dimension appears silhouette-like; an effect that is achieved by omitting the key light instead. Overall, this gives Cave a mysterious and haunting quality which meshes perfectly with his dark, brooding music.

An autobiographical format: To the left, another classic/cinematic moment is captured on film; Cave in the studio recording 'West Country Girl' (a love song featured on the album). To the right, an extract from 'The Secret Life...' is displayed, commencing with the sentence: 'That was a song called West Country Girl'. In essence, this digipak is designed to be read along with Cave's CD (this extract opens the album like it does with the digipak), to allow the audience to connect with the artist on a more intellectual and personal level.

A motif of black and white, cinematic photographs of Cave at the recording sessions run throughout the digipak to capture his immense creativity (left: Cave with an electric violin) and his melancholic, sensitive persona (evident in the right-hand photo) all in a snapshot. The abundance of intriguing photos make the listening experience more pleasurable for the audience, as they are provided with visuals to accompany Cave's lectures and compositions.

The quotations included in the digipak are specifically selected to provide an overview of Cave's lectures. For example, in the extract above, the artist mentions 'the love song', 'our senses', 'God' and his own songs. Moreover, this provides an overall representation of Cave as a spiritual individual and a philosophical, intellectual thinker.

Since this digipak follows a book-like format, the audio CD is held in a cardboard tube pocket (disguised merely as another page). This design is a great alternative to jewel cases which are prone to cracking and the conventional plastic tray in digipaks which possess the disadvantage of cracking also as the teeth of the hub are quite fragile. Although the hardback book format ensures double protection of the CD, consequently, production costs would be higher than for the conventional cardboard digipak.

Back Cover

The tracklisting of the five songs appears horizontally at the top of the back cover, quite unconventional to typical tracklistings which seem to run in the form of a list. A religious quotation is also presented which not only reflects how significant religion is to the artist as it has undoubtedly influenced his music, but also mimics a 'blurb' on the back of a book. Again, this is another signifier (alongside another photo) which supports the idea that this album is a mini-autobiography. The barcode, production/legal information and record label logo: 'King Mob Records' are also illustrated - the staple key conventions of any digipak.