Philadelphia — A former MAGNET editor returned to the world of print music journalism this month, publishing Undercover. The zine focuses on album covers, telling the stories behind famous indie/post-punk album covers, including Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, Wire’s Pink Flag, Slint’s Spiderland and more from Pixies, the Feelies, Echo & The Bunnymen and Unsane.
Interviews with the albums’ designers and photographers were conducted by Matthew Fritch (MAGNET intern class of ’97, no honors given). Accompanying the interviews, seven visual artists created original versions of the album sleeves—covers of covers, if you will—taking inspiration from the source material.
Critical reception of Undercover has been lukewarm, with one Instagram comment calling it “some kind of midlife crisis zine” and another characterizing it as “a cry for help.” A Passyunk Avenue record-store clerk who preferred not to be identified said it was “cool,” but it was somewhat unclear whether she was referring to the zine or the new Tame Impala song that had just begun playing in the shop. A major endorsement of Undercover came from MAGNET editor/publisher Eric T. Miller.
“I read most of it,” said Miller. “There’s a typo on page 13.”
The original artwork featured in the zine is a highlight, ranging from paintings and photography to a version of Pixies’ Surfer Rosa album cover created with genetically modified yeast incubated and painted in a petri dish. Fritch padded the rest of the zine with juvenile attempts at humor and cringeworthy references to obscure song lyrics and other quasi-countercultural tropes.
Appropriately, Undercover is available for free at some Philadelphia-area record stores, including Repo, Latchkey, Long In The Tooth, Philadelphia Record Exchange, Main Street Music and Creep Records. U.S. record stores interested in giving the zine away can email mattjfritch@gmail.com, and he’ll probably send you 10 copies.
Asked whether a second volume of an amateur, outdated medium chronicling 20th-century post-punk music and its accompanying design aesthetic will be coming, Fritch replied, “Nobody has asked me that question before.”
