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Food critics pick the tastiest album covers

October 01, 2015

Battles' album 'La Di Da Di' features food
The album cover of Battles' 'La Di Da Di' prominently features food.
Didriks CC BY 2.0/MPR graphic

The band Battles just released an album called La Di Da Di, and the cover of the album features a photograph of a lot of food. With that in mind, we at The Current reached out to some of MPR's food contributors to ask them for their picks for the "tastiest album covers" — that is, those albums with images of food on their covers. Here are their album picks.

Feel free to add your own selections in the comments section.

Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream & Other Delights

James Norton: "Seriously, this album cover requires no commentary. Just look at it. It's a demented work of pure genius."

Rachel Hutton/Quinton Skinner: "A very racy for-its-time cover conjures up a mood of instrumental cocktail sophistication."

Blancmange, Happy Families

Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl: "This is dating myself, but I spent a chunk of junior high staring at my copy of Blancmange's Happy Families, and I felt super in-the-know because also — Monty Python's blancmange skit! And no, I've never seen a blancmange in my adult life, in my critical path or anywhere else."

The Breeders, Last Splash

Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl: "Is the big heart on the cover a piece of candy? I've always felt yes. Scary candy."

Can, Ege Bamyasi

Quinton Skinner: "The LP by the German group Can — a great band that skirted the margins of the '70s and '80s — features green beans on its cover."

Cherry Glazerr, Haxel Princess

Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl: "Though the food doesn't really look delicious, I just like the album, and the song 'Grilled Cheese' consistently cracks me up."

JB and the Moonshine Band, Beer for Breakfast

Joe Alton: "I am by no means recommending that anyone subject themselves to the 'music' on this album, but it's a damn fine cover — and Rolling Stone apparently named it the best country album of 2012. Seemed apropos for the Morning Show's beer guy. I will say, although their song 'Beer for Breakfast' is no Replacements, it's kinda catchy."


So y'all can keep all y'all's mimosas
Or your coffee and liquor
'Cause down here in Texas
It's beer for breakfast

Ludacris, Chicken and Beer

Joe Alton: "Classic."

MF Doom, Mm.. Food

James Norton: "In the pantheon of food-themed album covers, rapper/super villain/underground hip hop mainstay MF Doom's album Mm.. Food has got to be at the front of the pack. You've got killer food-focused cartoon art depicting the man eating MF Doom-themed breakfast cereal covered in whole cream from a container sporting a "Have You Seen Me?" ad featuring MF Doom's own image. The tracks are solid despite their seriously on-the-nose food focus, and the album cover is actually an anagram for the artist's stage name. A serious argument can be made that this isn't a food album, it's THE food album."

Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed

Rachel Hutton/Quinton Skinner: "A weird cake (is that a tire in there?) with the band as knocked-over miniatures somehow captures the tone of the band as it hits its undeniable classic run."

Soul Asylum, Clam Dip and Other Delights

Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl: "Is it a cliché that the first thing that leaps to mind is Clam Dip & Other Delights? I guess it is… and no, I have no critical thoughts about clam dip!"

William Steinberg, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Best of Brahms

Joe Alton: "I recently saw this album in a garage-sale bin. It was the first cover I thought of when prompted to think of my 'most appetizing' album covers. Finding the cover without remembering the artist was hard, and I was surprised to find it was a recording of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra — and that it was named one of the worst classical album covers of all time. I couldn't disagree more."

The Velvet Underground and Nico, self titled

James Norton: "Regardless of your feelings about bananas (they're a divisive fruit), you are compelled to admit that the album cover for The Velvet Underground and Nico is bold, clean and totally arresting. The Andy Warhol banana that adorns the album hints at the groundbreaking quality of the tracks within ('Femme Fatale,' 'Heroin,' 'I'm Waiting for the Man') — it's iconic, and so is the music within this critically beloved album. Added bonus: the original LP cover actually featured a banana-skin sticker which could be peeled off to reveal a Warholian, flesh-tone banana underneath — as gimmicks go, this one is all class."

Rachel Hutton/Quinton Skinner: "Andy Warhol's banana sticker wasn't particularly appetizing, but it was incredibly original, a recombining of spare parts much like the groundbreaking music inside the sleeve."

The Contributors

Joe Alton is editor-in-chief of The Growler and project director of the Beer Dabbler.

Rachel Hutton is Minnesota Monthly's editor in chief. In the course of reporting on local agriculture and dining, she's donned both coveralls (to visit hog barns) and a spandex superhero uniform (to deliver pizza). Her work has been featured in the Best Food Writing series. Rachel is heard every Friday morning at 7:15 with John Birge on Classical MPR's Moveable Feast series.

Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl, veteran Twin Cities food and dining authority, is a five-time James Beard Award-Winning food writer who is also at Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine and author of Drink This: Wine Made Simple.

James Norton edits the Upper Midwestern food journal, Heavy Table. He's also the co-author of a book on Wisconsin's master cheesemakers and editor of The Secret Atlas of North Coast Food.

Quinton Skinner is a senior editor at Minnesota Monthly magazine.