Academic research

It seems as though music itself is no longer enough and it is no longer meant to be listened to, but experienced – shared, seen, witnessed, even worn, perhaps. We are noticing a major change in the music listening culture, whereby being exposed to a music album becomes a multimodal experience. It may take different forms and be realized through different media, but one of its aspects stays universal – the paratextual composition of diverse modes. Modes, i.e. ways of communication, which include linguistic, visual, aural, tactile, spatial and corporeal-gestural types, are employed in various combinations to create environments of contemporary music albums. Such environments are composed of the album’s paratext, i.e. material that surrounds it, ensures its existence in the world and extends its meaning beyond its song-based realms.

Our discussion would not have existed had it not been for Gérard Genette. In 1997 the French literary theorist revolutionized literary studies with the publication of Paratexts – a study that focused on a technical approach to textual analysis and which was the first to draw complete attention not to the text and its contents but instead to the text’s environment. The title, dedications, acknowledgements, and a full, boundless spectrum of other elements connected to the text itself were identified as meaningful items in the construction of a book’s presentation, bearing powerful influence on its reception in the public view. Genette labeled this group paratexts, paving ways for generations of various media theorists to come. He is to the literary world (and to all media) what punk rockers are to misfits – the liberator for the underrated, overlooked, and forgotten.

As we have transferred much of our daily lives online, the Internet has thus become a goldmine of multimodal texts. Messaging apps, social media and video-sharing platforms, webzines (online magazines), etc. – all of those sources thrive on multimodality. We are surrounded by this phenomenon without even acknowledging it, and the fact that it has such a marked presence in our everyday lives shows the extent of a positive impact it has on our cognition.

With two of the band members having been former graphic designers (Yalcinkaya 2017), it comes as no surprise that they use their knowledge and experience to create meaning by employing visualaids. Pentagram, a New York-based design firm one of the band members used to work for, have not only taken it upon themselves to design the album’s cover artand booklet, but a whole visual identity. Visual identity, i.e. “visible elements of a brand, such as color, form, and shape, which encapsulate and convey the symbolic meanings that cannot be imparted through words alone”, sometimes referred to as brand identity and corporate visual identity, is most often associated with corporate marketing. Not only are the visual materials corporate-like in their design, but the sole decision to employ a design firm to create it shows that the band plays with the ironic idea of perceiving The National as a corporation – something they are far from being as a liberal, indie band. This idea is consistent with Sleep Well Beast’s concept – monotony and repetitiveness present in the materials invokes the boredom of an office job, the unifying elements’ ubiquity implies the inability to escape it, and it being yet another depressing part of the lyrical ego’s everyday life.

tied together