Jack White and The Art of the Contrived Collectible
The Black Belles, an all-girl goth-rock band and the latest from producer Jack White, just played a trio of east coast dates in support of the act that would be the Butcher Blog’s house band if we, you know, had a house: Les Butcherettes.
In releasing the Black Belles self-titled debut, M. White and his Third Man Records are doing something that tickles the heart of our inner 14-year-old: talking up an offensive “banned” original cover. Yes it reminds of the Geffen Records ploy on Guns ‘N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction, which came complete with famously banned-for-being-offensive album art. Admittedly the Axl-approved robot rapist was actually pretty offensive.
The Belles are keeping their own banned-for-being-offensive album art under wraps until a show and album release party at Third Man Records’s record store in Nashville on Friday (where it will be available on “absinthe vinyl” no less — talk about your manufacturing of a collectible). Until then we can only marvel at the artwork on the single “Honky Tonk Horror”:
And the also banned-for-being-offensive video for the same single in which lead singer Olivia Jean repeatedly screams “I’ve been a bad girl” between footage of the girls a-going a-hangin’ (yeah, guess that could be misconstrued):
