A NEAR-PERFECT STORM!
Album cover review for Grant Maloy Smith’s Dust Bowl-American Stories By Darren Melchiorre 3.5 stars out of 4 Stars
CD Packaging and Booklet design by Grant Maloy Smith
A storm is coming and we are caught at the brink of it. What better art form for experiencing this moment than through an album cover. Grant Maloy Smith’s new album and cover design for Dust Bowl-American Stories, throws us right at the emergence of a dust storm. We are waiting for that gritty dirt to hit and that has made the cover become the perfect epicenter of a moment where stories are made and music can be heard.
The moment I saw this album cover, I was transported into a world I knew very little about, but wanted to experience, which is something that very few album covers do nowadays. I was transfixed. The design instantly evoked similar album designs that I love: The Dixie Chicks’ Home, Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk, to name a few. These designs were moments, and to capture a moment so perfectly in a design which then takes you out of what you are seeing, takes skillful thought and precision. But here, with moments like this (in this case it was the dust storms of the 1930s), as tragic as they are, always unearth some essence of beauty. And what form that beauty takes is always a gift. With this design, I am in the event as it is just about to happen, but I never felt like I was surrounded by doom, which could have been an easy outcome with a different design. The album cover immediately transports us to a time and place where disaster was imminent, but the before and after will be equally as powerful in telling tales of tragedy, connection, survival, heartache, and ultimately triumph. And you are there for it all! You join those two figures seen in the photo, as small as they are, and become the grandest of heroes, for they will unlock the stories when all is said and done. And as we know, stories make the best music.
What’s amazing about this cover design is that you never feel an ounce of despair. This isn’t the Titanic about to hit the iceberg. You are brought into a moment that you know will be a filled with “I was there and this is how I felt” storytelling when all is said and done, and what better way to introduce music than through that invitation. I was so happy to learn that Grant Maloy Smith himself designed this cover, with the cover photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It only makes the personal story deeper. Mr. Smith could have easily designed this cover with the viewer actually inside the dust bowl, or even in the aftermath for that matter. Some of the historical photos inside the packaging reveal these moments. But, no. He so cleverly put as at the brink that I felt like I was there at every aspect of the event-the before, the during, and the after. The genius of this cover is that in that one photo, in that one moment, Grant Maloy Smith creates a photographic time experience for us in such a way that is magical, and that the music will unravel in greater detail. He gave us the campfire without ever lighting a match.
If this design was missing anything is that I wanted to feel the grit on the cover. I wanted some type of texture on the packaging that made me feel the dust on my fingertips (maybe this will happen with the sequel version of the album). Beside this minor wish, this album cover is a near-perfect design and sets the standard of what album covers can create for the music they protect.