Googling “Squid” would would bring up dozens of photos and videos (including this—oh my!) of octopuses, cuttlefishes, and other types of cephalopods. Or—to the well-known Netflix series. Young lads born and bred on the internet obviously knew that if you want to be found and widely recognized, it’s always better to come up with a more fun and remarkable name—like Viagra Boys, Mannequin Pussy, or Feeble Little Horse. Boom, everyone loves you before your first single even drops!
On their third record, ‘Cowards’, Squid deliver straight, lean, and concise lines, literally woven from dozens of potential and real band names. “Do Nothing,” “Crispy Skin,” “Tucked in Bed,” and “All Those Words”—the band’s lead singer and drummer, Ollie Judge, recites them all in the almost baroque lead single ‘Crispy Skin’, as if he’s picking a new name for the band. By diving into the whole album, we can also come across gems like “No True American,” “Saloon Serene,” “Blood on the Boulders,” “Predator and Prey,” “Polythene Bags,” “Dogs and Rats,” “Shoes and Coat,” “A Carnival in Silver,” and “Robot in My Clothes.”
See? They definitely could have gone with some fancy-pants name, but for what? This avant-garde, Bristol-based quintet chose the provocative path of simplicity and monosyllabicity, laid by Can, Wire, and The Fall—iconic outfits that, in search results, are represented by, er, Coca-Cola cans and two eponymous series, respectively—very good ones, by the way. Such an approach is already a challenge for a random mainstream listener because, really, who wants to listen to some mundane, household cans, spoons, and raincoats? People want Thirty Seconds to Mars, The Killers, Imagine Dragons! Well, that’s not Squid’s case, sorry.
From the very beginning, they pursued the approach of “the more enigmatic, the better,” pushing their music to sound, among other post-punk revival peers, like the most sophisticated kid in class. (There was always that Black Midi prodigy lurking somewhere at the back of the classroom, though). “I’m always seeking out grotesque books or challenging music,” says Judge, adding, “I think it helps take me out of myself, which is something that I really find intriguing as a writer.”
All those quirky textures, squawk-laden vocals, and almost improvisational eight-minute-long jams—built from scraps of avant-garde jazz and krautrock—raised the entry threshold even higher for the average listener. A speculative explanation might suggest that by writing their opening two albums—‘Bright Green Field’ and ‘O Monolith’—mainly during the pandemic lockdown and supporting the second one in 2021 with a socially distanced tour, they didn’t fully experience the diversity of life and weren’t entirely connected with their audience, creating music guided chiefly by their own feelings.
‘Cowards’ became Squid’s first full-length to be entirely written and recorded under the influence of broader engagement with the world, including proper touring and traveling, rather than concepts and ideas confined to paper or a screen. This made their music blossom. It’s immediately evident in the unsettling, symphonically rich second single ‘Building 650’,inspired by their “first ever trip to Japan” as well as Ryu Murikami’s ‘Miso Soup’ and Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’. Their sonics became more uninhibited, laid back, thoughtful, and—intercontinental.
Using Judge’s own words from ‘Showtime!’, they no longer “hide behind the blinds,” observing life only from a distance and through the internet. “It kind of comes from traveling around the world and, like, reading different books from those different countries,” he says, pondering their new direction. Antsy, angry, nervous, shrill, raw, barbed, claustrophobic tunes and dystopian visions have given way to a more accessible yet still diverse and inventive sound, with even subtler textures—gradually transforming them from “weird post-punk stuff from England” into a worldwide-ready, ever-changing band.
“I think we wanted things to be a little bit more straightforward than the last record. It’s kind of strangely experimental for us,” states Judge. Sure, there are still some signature distortions, well-calculated spontaneity, and gorgeous freakouts on the album. Still, aside from the first two singles, these are primarily rare splashes rather than omnipresent signature details. They fully lean into their crank wave past only once—on the Gang of Four-ish, upbeat kicker ‘Showtime!’—yet don’t even bother carrying its familiar Dan Carey/Speedy Wunderground mood to the end, instead switching halfway through to a These New Puritans-meets The Prodigy electronic disruption.
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Most of the album is sweet and woozy baroque pop, like the piano-led twilight ballad ‘Blood on the Boulders’ or the duology of minimalistic lullabies, ‘Fieldworks I’ and ‘Fieldworks II’. Yet, after the record’s midpoint, it becomes especially clear that they had found some new direction. ‘Cro-Magnon Man’, vaguely reminiscent of Dirty Projectors stumbling upon Broken Social Scene, gives us a glimpse of something like… math folk. The closing, eight-minute-long epic ‘Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence)’, permeated with theater-like ambient noise, is constructed as if it were a Flaming Lips-esque cosmic opera intertwined with something like Bach’s ‘Brandenburg Concertos’.
This time, it’s extremely hard to compare them with Can or Neu!—or even call them stockpiling magpies. Leaving behind krautrock and other prog influences, along with most of their post-Brexit new wave tricks, they have begun their journey toward a cohort of self-assured artists—ones who, thanks to their more expansive vision, no longer have to copy the paintings of great masters. Now, Squid are slowly becoming the ones whose signature style could soon be widely appropriated, and who knows—maybe one day, at the top of web search results for “Squid,” there will be another popular one.
8/10
Words: Igor Bannikov
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Squid – Cowards | Reviews – clashmusic.com
