The Cover Uncovered: Erica Eyres talks us through her unnerving artwork for Dry Cleaning’s ‘Secret Love’
While Dry Cleaning aren’t exactly the sort of band you’d expect to consistently deliver unnerving and disturbing artwork for their records, they appear to be making something of a habit of it.
Their first couple of EPs and debut album New Long Leg were both adorned with abstract photos and illustrative collages that were suitably reflective of Florence Shaw’s patchwork approach to lyrical worldbuilding, but that all changed with the release of 2022’s Stumpwork, which caused something of a stir, and their latest effort, Secret Love, has carried on in a similar vein.
“They told me that their last album was really controversial,” said Erica Eyres, the painter behind Secret Love’s artwork, addressing the fact that Stumpwork was represented by a cluster of carefully calligraphed pubes on a bar of soap. “I guess because you see so many grotesque things in contemporary art, to me, it’s not that shocking, but people made a really big deal about it.”
As divisive as this sleeve proved to be, with some fans calling it an eyesore, it did manage to win designer duo Rottingdean Bazaar a Grammy Award for ‘Best Recording Package’, aided in part by the collection of photographs of other assorted bathroom items that came with the inserts. Despite this gross-out artwork winning a major accolade for the band, Glasgow-based Eyres didn’t seem to hesitate at the idea of following up with something equally not for the faint of heart.
Without any previous knowledge of the band and their work, Eyres was given complete freedom by the band to deliver a series of works that were true to her own style, and that were based on her own interpretations of what she gleaned from listening to the record. What she ended up settling on is an intricate, yet skin-crawlingly hard to look at piece involving vocalist Florence Shaw having eyedrops put in while a hand prizes the lid open.
Personally, as someone who flinches at the idea of anything touching my eyes but loves unsettling art, having Shaw staring me down as I spoke with Eyres for an exclusive interview with Far Out was akin to a necessary form of exposure therapy. Eyres, on the other hand, doesn’t see herself as someone who makes her work deliberately challenging in this regard. “It’s not like I’m super into horror movies or anything like that, but I think I do have this attraction to things that are a bit grotesque or uncanny,” she revealed.
“I started to think about different imagery that popped up in it, or how I was responding to it,” she continued. “For me, it was quite bodily in a way, just through different references to the body, things like blood and hitting the head. On that first track [‘Hit My Head All Day’], it kind of has this heartbeat sound throughout it.”
With exploring bodily imagery being Eyres’ gut instinct, she chose to follow this notion for the cover, although there was one request that the band had made which she saw as an initial obstacle. “They wanted to be somehow in it, and that kind of made me panic a little bit,” she explained. “I’m not really that kind of artist. I work from images a lot, but they don’t necessarily end up looking like the original person or image, so I suggested that I could use images that I find, but I could maybe try and put [the band] into them.”
Getting the band’s approval to work in this manner led Eyres down a path of finding the appropriate material to work from, and she soon found inspiration from what most would consider to be an unlikely source. “I was interested in using these first aid images, where it’s kind of a weird, brutal image, but also there’s a kind of tenderness in it through someone helping someone,” she explained. “I definitely felt that kind of tenderness that’s in it, or some kind of longing for someone who’s not there.”
Adding to the complexity of designing for an album sleeve was the fact that Eyres hadn’t even considered all of the additional work she’d have to put into the final product. “I didn’t really realise how many components there are of an album,” she protested. “There’s different versions of it; there’s the cover, there’s the back, there’s this book that comes out and the little sticker.”
While the artwork for the singles were all pre-existing paintings that Eyres had done and weren’t tied to the album’s themes, there were plenty of other pictures she had to create which incorporated images of the band, which she wasn’t entirely confident they’d take well to given her tendency to mutate her subjects. “I was like ‘are they gonna be upset? I’ve painted Nick [Buxton, the band’s drummer] as this miniature person?’” As unflattering as it may be, her slightly warped portrayals of the band all come together cohesively and add to the unnerving charm of the entire project’s imagery. After all, they seemed to have no qualms about using it.
Of course, given Shaw’s shared background as a visual artist, there was the added pressure applied to Eyres to impress someone with a discerning taste in art. “I did talk with Florence once on the phone, which was really good,” she admits. “I feel like it was more just reassurance than anything. I suppose it’s easier working with artists because they know the process and they have different expectations than someone that doesn’t have an art background.”
Though she cites the works of Raymond Pettibon on a large portion of Black Flag’s releases and the knitted creature made by Mike Kelley for Sonic Youth’s Dirty as being just a few of her favourite album sleeves, Eyres may have added to Dry Cleaning’s excellent oeuvre of captivating album covers with her work on Secret Love. What makes it such an enthralling work of art is its ability to make you want to turn away in disgust, but pull you back for another quick peek to peel back some of its additional layers.
This, according to Eyres, is what makes a great piece of album artwork. “I think there should be a bit of mystery,” she concludes. “I suppose with any artwork, I prefer it if you don’t get the whole story at once, or if it’s striking, but it’s a challenge to do something that gives you enough information without giving it all away.” With even more mystery tucked into the album itself to be explored, it invites all the curiosity one might require to pose an interest, all while simultaneously being slightly repulsive.
