Art for Art's sake? Welcome to Sniff'n'the Tears' Art Gallery

I talked about the music of Sniff'n'the Tears yesterday, but I didn't mention the album covers, despite the cover art being quite remarkable, for various reasons. For one thing, its lurid, pulpy nature, at least for the first two albums. I first got intrigued by Sniff'n'the Tears not by the music, but by the album cover of The Game's Up when rifling through my dad's vinyls. Now, one reason is obvious - half naked woman alert! - but there was something about the pulpy crime novel aspect of it that had me interested. Obviously, the music doesn't sound pulpy at all, but these covers sure were able to get some eyeballs on them. The thing that makes Sniff'n'the Tears' cover art so interesting is that Mr. Sniff himself, Paul Roberts, painted them. As a matter of fact, Roberts was juggling a career as a fledgling painter with the career of a fledgling rock star. When he restarted the band after having initially given up on the pub rock iteration of the band in 1974, he was  actually at his most successful as an artist, so taking a chance on the whole rock star thing really was a bit of a risk. Roberts' cover art has a distinctive, ultra-realist style, to the point that the covert art of Fickle Heart, the band's debut, looked like a photo. These albums covers are at least as memorable as the also often lurid ones from Roxy Music, even if they didn't shift more units of the band's albums.   

But what about the music, you say? The music is more or less of a piece with the one on yesterday's Best Of, even though my selection is of course highly selective. I eliminated everything that veered too much into soft rock or, um, cock rock. Anything that bored me obviously had to go also. And like this I ended up with 21 high-quality tracks. Art Gallery admittedly runs a little long at 79 minutes, but I liked everything on here, and I think the band's versatility assures that no one gets bored.

Art Gallery is programmed to run like a companion piece to the album posted yesterday. It is also done in the way a record company would, adding a rarity and a couple of live tracks, which - for this Greatest Hits II type album - also comprise the band's one hit. I started to include live tracks for another reason, though: By the time of Love/Action in 1981 the band had started to embrace 'modern' (i.e. very Eighties) techniques and by its follow up Ride Blue Divide - produced by the band itself - the music was positively swimming in them. So I took live cuts from their Rockpalast concert in 1982 to have better, more muscular versions of "Shame" and "Trouble Is My Business", then decided to throw in "Driver's Seat" and "What Would Daddy Do?" in as a bonus. 

A Best Of and Art Gallery together pretty much bring you all the Sniff'n'the Tears you need, at least from the band's original run. Their surprise hit with "Driver's Seat" again had Roberts reactivate a version of the band in 1991 and he has since then occasionally issued albums as Sniff'n'the Tears. I haven't really delved into any revival Sniff, but might do so at some point in the future. For now though, let's check out the band's heydays, and for that, time to enter my Art Gallery... 

P.S. Not enough art around here? Here's a bonus lurid album cover from Mr. Roberts...