The cover art for the record that would go on to top three separate year-end indie lists was shot in a single afternoon, in a friend's apartment, using one borrowed strobe light, a white bedsheet taped to a wall as a backdrop, and a camera the photographer had bought secondhand the month before.
Budget constraints shaped almost every visible decision. The band couldn't afford a stylist, so members wore their own clothes; there was no set designer, so the apartment's own clutter — visible in early test shots — had to be cleared by hand between takes; there was no retoucher on staff, so the final grade was done by the photographer alone, over two late nights.
“We had one strobe, a bedsheet and a Tuesday. That's the whole budget line.”
What reads as an aesthetic choice — the slightly blown-out highlights, the visible grain, the flat, uningratiating light — was, by the photographer's own account, mostly a function of not owning better gear. 'People ask if the grain was intentional. Some of it was the ISO I had to shoot at because we only had one light. I've made peace with people calling it a style.'
The band and photographer agree the shoot's real budget was time, not money: four hours of the band actually being comfortable enough in front of the camera to stop performing, which the photographer says is the only part of the process that can't be solved by better equipment.
Asked if a bigger budget on the follow-up record would change the approach, the answer was a flat no. 'The whole point was that it looked like us. If it looks expensive, it stops looking like us.'
