The sweatshirt is the honest tell. Nobody puts one on to go out. You put it on because you are staying in, the lamp is low, and there is a side to get through. SIDE A. ALL THE WAY THROUGH. NO SKIPPING. It is not a rule anybody imposed. It is the one you keep, on a Tuesday, for nobody's benefit but the record's.
The art is typeset the way a 1970s sleeve credit block was: a heavy condensed slab header, a grooved platter and tonearm beneath it, and a sunburst of rays opening out behind, three flat retro inks that read warm on every shade. Every mark is original. No band, no label, no borrowed cover art, and a centre label deliberately left blank. The range runs dark on purpose: that's the light a record gets played in.
It also solves the one real problem with buying for a record collector: this cannot be a duplicate.
Side one, start to finish. That was always the deal.
