Boyd Elder's album cover for Yacht

by Douglas Wolk

The cover of Yacht’s See Mystery Lights (DFA) is the first album cover in many years from Boyd Elder, who’s best known for his sleeve art for the Eagles (they played their first show at one of his art openings). “We made the record in the West Texas desert,” says Yacht’s Jona Bechtolt, “and Boyd’s an icon of that particular area.” Elder’s artwork is an unearthly geometrical composition, printed with holographic foil, his current medium of choice; according to Bechtolt, Elder also wanted to incorporate glow-in-the-dark ink and UV spot coating. The band has posted a Flash animation inspired by the design at seemysterylights.com. It strobes words like “responsibility” and “knowledge” against a shifting background of interlocking triangles. “It was a cool collaboration—Old World and New World coming together,” says the band’s Claire Evans. “It doesn’t look like anything anyone we know would have made.” Bechtolt agrees: “Even outside the indie music world, I don’t think this design fits into any kind of current trend. Which is what we wanted. Boyd doesn’t follow music so much. The other day he was saying, ‘Hey, man, I just got this awesome idea—you should put your album on the Internet!’”

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