Ancillary Text Analysis - Digipack

Taking Back Sunday - New Again

The digipak I have decided to analyse is Taking Back Sunday's fourth studio album titled 'New Again' and was released on June 1st 2009.

This digipak is quite elaborate, as not only the album CD and song booklet is included, in the 6 panel fold out case, but a DVD is also included, containing the 'Making of the album' and a 'Track-by-track commentary by the band'. I think this bonus was included to form a link between the band and the fans, allowing them to see 'behind-the-scenes' possibly to create the sense that they are a part of the band, and as a kind of gift to them for staying fans of Taking Back Sunday. The DVD extra may also have been included, as 'New Again' was released quite a long time after their previous album 'Louder Now', so the band wanted to show they were still around, and maybe giving themselves the chance to explain the inspirations behind each song, if their style had changed at all.

Here are a few annotations I made, now with the accompanying digipak panel:

 The band's name and album title is found on the front of the digipak case, which is highly conventional of a digipak. However it's placement is slightly unusual as it is in the top left corner, in fairly small font, and a light colour that makes it blend in with the picture, causing the most attention to be drawn to the car, and the girl seen through the windscreen. But it could be suggested the name is in the top left, as that is how the English language is written, so the viewer would immediately see it, as that is how they naturally read.

The band have said previously that the number 152 always appears somewhere on their album covers, on this album the numbers are shown very discreetly on the fuzzy dice hanging on the rear view mirror, with one dot, five dots and two dots, on each dice, respectively. Also on both the CD and DVD a speedometer design is printed, one in a grey blue, and the other brown, both with the needle pointing at 152 mph on both, as illustrated below:

There are some recurring themes in the album artwork, such as old cars, which appear on the outside of the album, and within the song booklet (see below), maybe to show a different interpretation of being 'New Again' showing the old fairly beaten up cars, possibly representing the band/band members, being slightly worn, but classic and just as good as they used to be. The distressed look of the cars follows on into other parts of the artwork, like the CD and DVD (above) that have a worn look to them, with the colour scratched off, and the font on the front cover also has a similar effect.

There is only one picture of the band in the whole digipak, and it is behind where the CD fits, so obscures them entirely. This may be the band trying to suggest that the music is more important than who they are, or what they look like, or that it comes before them, or that quite literally they are behind the music.

Inside the digipak are all the credits to producers, engineers etc. as well as who the band thanks, where the songs were recorded, the band's management and some endorsements of brands. Features like these are very important in albums, to make sure any people involved or relevant get the credit and acknowledgement they are due. The artwork inside uses the same colour palette that is used throughout the album, it is quite muted, consisting of quite neutral colours like blue, green, brown and grey, and also many different darker shades of these colours. These colours could connote a sense of calmness about the album, and the music on it, or the band themselves, or is possibly intended to be contrapuntal to the music to create a vivid contrast and ambiguous impression.

These are some annotations I made of the back of the digipak (With the image I am referring to, below)

The back of the digipak has a similar image to the front, with the girl motif stood with her back to us, and look down and into the distance. This creates a very ambiguous kind of narrative, as nothing is known of the girl, not even her face is shown. But the feeling that she is lost seems quite strong, as the setting is very bare and isolated, and she has abandoned, presumably her car, with the most obvious reason being that it has broken down. But maybe she chose to stop in the middle of nowhere, to think, or because the setting she is in means something to her or reminds her of something, she could even be waiting for something/someone.

This recurring image is incredibly ambiguous and could be interpreted in many different ways, this puts me off slightly of this style of cover, however if it is supposed to represent the band's style, i.e. fairly mysterious, then it works quite well.