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Baker's Dozen

Primary Colours: Faris Badwan Of The Horrors' Favourite Albums
Suzie McCracken , May 6th, 2014 08:15

With their new album Luminous released yesterday, The Horrors' frontman picks out some of his favourite (and, in fact, least favourite) illustrated covers in an artistic Baker's

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The Jesus Lizard - Down
During our first ever rehearsal as The Horrors we were doing a load of garage covers and then we started doing our first original song - it was called ‘The Fall Of Winter'. There's a bootleg of it somewhere online and it sounds like a complete mess, a racket. When we wrote it, Josh [Hayward, guitarist] said, "That song sounds a bit like The Jesus Lizard". And I said, "Who are The Jesus Lizard?" and I went and checked them out. Down was the first record of theirs I bought. There's something about that cover itself... I think it's the actual painting style. It puts ideas in your head. There's an important difference between an illustration or painting that puts ideas in your head and one that turns you off. This does a little of both and that's probably what they're going for - trying to turn you off in a good way. Even the way all their records have four-letter word titles is trying to piss you off. There's also an element of the grotesque about them that I guess people like.