Over at Album Cover Hall of Fame is an excellent interview with James Marsh, the artist responsible for all of Talk Talk’s album covers. He provides some fascinating background on how each cover was chosen for Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock, and After the Flood.

Here’s a sample:

“When asked to consider producing a cover for SOE, I recall being consciously aware of permeating undertones from the natural world that were somehow imbued on the album, as far as I had heard on the sample tracks, so it seemed quite apt for me to suggest something containing naturalistic imagery. I produced some visuals to discuss at the next meeting, along-side showing Keith a selection of transparencies of my personal, unpublished work, a painting titled “Fruit Tree” being one of them. It was a simple case of him saying “Oh, I like that image, I’d like to show it to the band”, or words to that effect, which he promptly did and shortly afterwards a unanimous decision was taken to use it.”