Sing that iTune!

Ok, so this is going to be a little convoluted, so bear with me: I was looking for a new screen saver for the Mac I inherited from Jude and came across an option that displays all the artwork of the albums in my iTunes. Cool... Then I realize that it will only show the artwork of songs which I've bought from iTunes and not others I either ripped from my CDs or downloaded from elsewhere. Which means basically, my screen saver isn't going to show very many different album covers... (because who REALLY buys anything from iTunes right?)

So I do what any sane person does when confronted with a potentially life-threatening crisis- I go online. I find this widget for the Mac dashboard- Sing That iTune- that not only finds and downloads the album artwork into your iTunes, it retrives the lyrics for the song you're currently playing and displays it on your dashboard. Amazing! Ok, it's a very precise program which means that you need to spend time going through your iTunes and making sure that all your songs and albums are labelled correctly (it won't be able to find the lyrics or artwork if it doesn't match how the iTunes Store has categorized it). And it doesn't seem to work with soundtracks. The only sountrack it managed to retrieve artwork for was the Six Feet Under one which I bought from iTunes.

Now, once you have all the artwork for all the albums in your library (this took me almost two hours- so you can imagine how little work I got done last night...), you will not only have a smashingly awesome screen saver (which is making me even less productive since I end up NOT wanting to type just so I can watch the screen saver come on...), you also discover some of the gorgeous album covers of the music you have that you otherwise would have not known about. I think that's one of the saddest drawbacks of digital music- since it's only about the tracks, fewer and fewer people get to appreciate the thought and creativity that goes into packaging the album. Jude's friends, The Observatory, is a great case in point. Their album came in a booklet which looks handmade, complete with hand-torn pages and strategically placed paper-clips. It was literally a labor of love. Granted it was a special edition packaging, but still, the amount of work that went into it was phenomenal.

So anyway, here are some of my favorite album covers that now grace my screen saver. Some I've loved for a long time, others I only discovered with my new little snazzy program.

Modest Mouse (Good News For People Who Love Bad News)

I'm not sure if you can see, but the walls are bleeding a milkshake-pink from the arrows. Reason enough for me...

The Shins (Chutes Too Narrow)

I love this one because it reminds me of one of our favorite digital artists, J. Otto Seibold. He and his wife wrote a whole series of really whimiscal and heartwarming graphic books that we used to collect.

Belle & Sebastian (Tigermilk)

There's just something very elemental about this cover that fascinates me. Maybe it's a maternal thing.

Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)

This is one of those that I just came across. I like it coz of its texturedness. And the whole thing looks kind of ethereal... like her voice.

Neil Finn (Try Whistling This)

Come on, doesn't this album cover just make you want to smile? :)

Six Feet Under (Original Soundtrack)

Nothing beats a well-composed, well-captured photo. And gotta love that car, ok, hearse...

Ian Love (Ian Love)

I like the almost child-like and kinda vintage quality of the art here. And the slightly kooky way that the girl and the tigers are placed on the globe. And you can just barely make out a travelling bag in the corner. Oh, and those look like bowling shoes...

Iron and Wine & Calexico (In The Reins)

Love the boldness of the colors, and the semi-fantastical quality of the picture. Reminds me of Chagall.