Brighton band Squid are not in the business of straightforward. Combining jazz chops with a sensibility that’s at once post-punk, prog and avant-garde, their music is wilfully tricksy. Yet it does groove, upon occasion, it does funk. Tunes do pop in for a visit.
Throughout their near-decade career, they’ve fired out some tasty off-the-wall cuts, from skronk-rock bangers to wigged-out alt-pop. Just check “Houseplants”, “The Narrator” or “Fugue (Bin Song)” for evidence. Their third album contains a couple of equally intriguing songs but whether it’s a wholesale listen will depend on the Squid-tolerance of the listener.
These are songs about evil (so the press release states). They are delivered in the sometimes whispered, sometimes shrieked, sometimes spoken, sometimes sung vocals of Ollie Judge, and are stream-of-consciousness vignettes. Take the sort-of-tuneful, slow-building “Blood on the Boulders”, for instance, which seems to be about a Manson-at-Spahn-Ranch type murder. Possibly. Mostly, the subject matter isn’t what hits the listener immediately. It’s the intricate, ambitious music that your next door neighbour would undoubtedly label “difficult”. This is usually an abstract rock-funk that veers between the almost ear-friendly and the caustically cantankerous, seasoned with occasional kosmische-folk chorales.
By way of a comparative, imagine the rustic sweetness of Soft Machine or Ultramarine having it out with the very particular sonic perversity of The Very Things, Pere Ubu, Dog Faced Hermans, This Heat or, of course, those conceptual granddaddies, King Crimson.
On Cowards Squid welcome guests from the experimental world, such as electro-singer-songwriter Tony Njoku, the strings of Ruisi Quartet, and musical psychogeographer Clarissa Connelly. No-one who might encourage them too far towards the approachable. At this point, that might help. Squid have something and, undoubtedly, this outing will retain their cult following. Songs such as the single “Cro-Magnon Man” and the brass-fuelled title track are, after all, weirdly more-ish.
But – call me a spoilsport – I’d love to hear them attempt to “sell out”. Whatever that entailed would be truly fascinating.
Below: watch the visualiser for "Cro-Magnon Man" by Squid
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