Today a heated debate broke out over what exactly the artwork for
Animal Collective's new album,
Centipede Hz is supposed to be. Well, less a debate, and more of a collective head-scratching. What IS that thing? There are two main schools of thoughts. We shall explore both.
ARGUMENT FOR THE EYE (By Joe)
This thing is like the Sauron of art music. Sure, the surrounding boarders look vaguely like a mutated, zombie Rolling Stones logo, but the very clear hair follicles protruding from the upper right-hand corner can only be lashes. Look into the center -- dripping, floating colors and a milky surface? The reflection of the band itself, visually distorted into some sort of mirrored, out-of-focus portrait? The whole motif of
Centipede Hz being projected onto our eye-balls as a 16-bit graphic can only allude to a wholly visual metaphor, and the
Centipede Hz logo makes the most sense as a visual stimulus, literally and figuratively.
It can only be an eye. I mean it's either that, or a vagina. Your call.
ARGUMENT FOR THE MOUTH (By Kara)
If it's an eye, where's the iris? If those are lashes, why are they only in one corner? And they stretch out into the eye. Eyes are made with smooth lines, symmetry, and precision. This cover art has none of those elements because it's not an eye. It's a mouth.
First, look at the lips. While they're filled with a texture-less gradient, the outlines clearly show seams of an upper and lower lip. Picture the opening of
Rocky Horror Picture Show. The lines are not lashes, theyre contours of the lip shape. On eyes, the top lid is thicker than the bottom. On mouths, the bottom is thicker. Notice here how not only is the bottom, plumper lip defined in this cover art, the top is given a dual-peaked upper lip.
For those who are still in doubt, the graffiti pattern within the lips makes out teeth. To be fair, the bottom teeth are outlined, while the top teeth are filled in which makes them a little harder to recognize... but they're there. While I have no answers for what the 'lashes' in the top corner actually are, it's an Animal Collective album, are we really supposed to understand all of it? I think we're just lucky to be able to figure out the basic shape. The basic shape of the mouth.
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Centipede Hz is out in September.