New Pornographers 'Together' Album Art Shows Dark Side of Snow Globes

They look so happy, the dancing and flying figurines on the front and back cover of The New Pornographers' new album, 'Together.' Of course, they also look like they could be plummeting to their death.

"Depends if you're a pessimist or an optimist," offers the band's singer-keyboardist Kathryn Calder.

The cover photo is actually entitled 'The Cliff' by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz, frontman A.C. Newman tells Spinner.

"I'm really into it. I think our manager found the artist. These are all details of snow globes. These artists, that's their medium; they work in snow globes. We loved a lot of their work, but this image in particular was the one we all loved for the cover."

"They just took photos of these snow globes with these figurines in them," explains Calder.

The inside art and sleeve show the snow globes more clearly. The dome is actually visible, but not on the cover.

"The thing is," says Newman, "this isn't the whole photo. You can't see the whole thing here because if it went down another inch, you'd see that there's a body dead against the rocks -- like he seems to have his back broken. I remember thinking, 'We've got to cut that out.'"

"What I liked about it was you could look at it a couple of different ways. It could be them just leaping off the iceberg to their deaths, but it also looks like they're just jumping and having fun or floating or flying."

"Or cliff jumping," adds Calder, "or cliff diving or whatever you call it."

"They're all together and it could be very positive," says Newman. "Even if they are jumping to their deaths, they're doing it together."