Inner Sleeve: Zeke Clough

Kevin Blechdom – Eat My Heart Out (Chicks On Speed 2005)
Design by Kevin Blechdom

Kevin Blechdom’s Eat My Heart Out – both the artwork and the music – is the album that’s really resonated with my scrambled nerves in the past few years. There are two covers to the album; the outer card one has a drawing on it, presumably to protect vulnerable sensibilities from the photo of a nudie Kevin Blechdom clutching offal to her chest underneath...The card sleeve has a wraparound drawing on it; the front shows Kevin’s hand clutching a big veiny heart that has a broken wooden Cupid’s arrow through it. Blood oozes out of severed veins to form amorphous blobs. Two skinny veins run over to the back cover, where an anguished looking Kevin hangs, transfixed in mid-air, like a deranged butterfly stuck on a pin, fluttering madly in its death throes. One vein leads into a bloody hole that goes right through the middle of her chest and the other leads to a microphone that she’s singing into. The drawing is done in a beautiful rounded-off cartoon style, with thick black outlines and colours that look like they’ve been done with felt tip pens. Ho ho ho, all good happy fun: she’s wringing out the blood from her battered heart to the sickening sound of a laughter track. The mix of crazed cartoon mania and full-on catharsis in her art and music is a real inspiration to me, both in my own drawings and my croaking along to The Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra. There’s been many embarrassing aftermaths of the night before, when drawing or howling it out while trying to keep a straight face has been the only way to cope with it till the memories fade. Then, to nail the point home, underneath the cartoon cover is a photo of a topless Kevin Blechdom with a raw, bloody heart cradled to her bosom. This heart seems to bulge and hang from between her fingers in a splayed mess of meat. She carries her heart on her sleeve as graphically as possible without being subjected to an autopsy. Her bruised and battered heart right there on the counter to be prodded, poked and scrutinised while she laughs along to the carnage. There’s no glamour or attempt to entice or hoodwink anyone here, just an oozing, bloody spectacle. She’s staring the viewer down and smirking, all her frailties on display for the vicarious delight of the crowd, yet she seems to be trying not to laugh. It’s not until the back cover photo, which shows a downcast, bloodspattered and serious looking Kevin Blechdom, that the joke’s finally over.
Zeke Clough designs sleeves for the Skull Disco label and is a member of The Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra.