When Savages released their debut album Silence Yourself back in 2013, Sufjan Stevens took a stab at them for their LP cover art, specifically noting their questionable choice of italicised font.
At the time, he ranted about it on Tumblr, stating:
“The very cool SAVAGES has allowed a very uncool typographical blunder on its LP cover… Who the Fraggle designed this?”
He later reiterated how much the artistic ballsup had tarnished his love of the band, stating: “I will never forgive your awkward italics, but I will forever sing your anthems to my children’s children.”
Flash-forward to 2016, and Jehnny Beth of Savages has had a request on her Beats 1 radio show Start Making Sense, to play Impossible Soul from Sufjan Stevens’ 2010 album The Age of Adz.
To which Beth swiftly refused, explaining to her listeners that A) it wouldn’t be the best idea to play a song that lasts 25 minutes on the radio, and B) she had no interest in airing Stevens’ music on her show anyway, due to his crass comments about her album cover those three fateful years ago.
“I don’t think I’d like to play some Sufjan Stevens on my show anyway. I remember when my first record with Savages came out.He wrote a quite funny blog post about how much he hated our album cover,” she said.
“He went into quite extensive detail—the font…everything. It was cute, especially as I was looking at his own album covers. Mmm, I must say, I was not really very impressed.”
Listen to the clip from Beth’s radio show below.
Meanwhile, Sufjan and Savages are both performing on Saturday July 16 at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. Buy tickets here.
Watch Savages perform at the 2013 Pitchfork Festival below:
Watch Stevens play Impossible Soul in NYC:
