Ed: I knew I wanted it to be a certain shade of blue, funny enough. We took a bit of time to find the shade. I was very drawn to albums from about 1969 to 1974. Obviously, there’s Joni Mitchell’s Blue, which is seminal. I was also thinking about Bridge Over Troubled Water. It’s such a funny, grainy photo of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel walking down a busy street. It’s kind of ordinary but still so powerful because of what’s in that record. I don’t have an artistic collaborator like Thom and Stanley Donwood — they’ve done all of these amazing covers for Radiohead and Thom’s stuff for the Smile. That’s a very, very lengthy process, but I don’t have time for that. If you get artwork for me, it needs to evolve.

Steve Gullick, an amazing photographer who’s done a lot of landscape art, came down to Wales. He had never done album covers or art direction, but I liked his process. We initially tried somebody, but it was too clean. I said, “This record has dirt under the fingernails. It needs mud; it needs the earth.” He did that whole process where he took copies of the photo, laid them outside in the sun for three days, and then they weathered. I guess I’m like a butterfly getting its wings.