Azure Ray - for no one, 2001

"Maudlin at its best. Or maybe it's good at its most maudlin. Either way, that's Azure Ray. Even visually. Their album cover is simple: just an old, sepia-toned photograph of a little girl. She looks like my grandmother as a child. Nostalgia and melancholy rub off the liner notes and stain your fingertips. The little girl clutches her palms to her ears and wears an inscrutable expression that vacillates from pouty to fearful to verge-of-tears, depending on what mental angle you hold it at. Or she could just be pressing hard on earphones concealed beneath her baby tresses, trying to soak up every bit of this album."