Cowards

Before their second album was even released, Squid had already finished writing and recording their third. In fact, the band finished tracking No. 3 on June 9, 2023 — the same day O Monolith (No. 2), came out. How's that for work ethic?Made up of Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivel and Anton Pearson, Squid began in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band, performing monthly shows in Brighton while living across the Sussex coast. They put their touring plans on hold at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and released their first album, Bright Green Field, in 2021, then followed that up with the aforementioned O Monolith in 2023. Now, with the release of Cowards, their third album in four years, Squid have expanded their sonic palette yet again, delivering an eerie, apocalyptic record that's their most powerful and complex statement to date.The band assembled a number of friends, artists and musicians to bring their layered compositions to life: producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks, Danish experimentalist Clarissa Connelly, composer Tony Njoku, Rosa Brook from punk group Pozi, percussionist Zands Duggan, and the Ruisi Quartet all helped Squid develop the album's intricate, fractured textures. Leadbetter sampled harpsichord and timpani, and they even recorded Nankivell's bike for atmospheric purposes. Every note, every moment, was worked on together, and it shows: even on the album's most sinister tracks, there's a warmth and musicality that only comes with intense collaboration and coalescence.Shimmering album opener "Crispy Skin" is devious and delicious, slinking and driving with a hypnotic bassline complementing a procession of coos, percussion and strings that float between the motorik groove and Judge's vocals. His groaning, moaning inflection on "Crispy Skin" will crawl under yours; when he intones, "Am I the bad one?" he doesn't wait for an answer: "Yep, yes I am." There's something undeniably Thom Yorke-ian about his delivery, yet it's even more ominous and unsettled. This approach continues throughout the album, Judge's voice yelping and curdling its way to the front.Drawing on cult fiction, Judge was inspired to craft words and worlds in which the likes of death and the digital, nihilism and narcissism, and apathy and intention, all interweave seamlessly — and, at times, horrifically. "Blood on the Boulders" is a lurching, spoken-word denunciation of death tourism, as well as the kind of social media sensationalism that reduces murder and violence to content. It explodes into a lurid, squelching second half, with Judge screaming "We wanna know!" There is a horror show canon in which Judge and a group of voices clamber on top of one another, repeating "We return to the scene" ad nauseam before returning to the lurch. The tourists escape the Californian sun, running from the blood and the heat and the madness back to whence they came."Fieldworks I" and "Fieldworks II" are a mismatched pair; a set of fraternal conjoined twins, similar but different, identical yet polar. "I" glides along on the aforementioned processed harpsichord, while "II" skitters and dances, the tense, ticking percussion bookended by ghostly vocals and anxious riffs. A similarly glitchy approach is the backbone of "Cro-Magnon Man," whose clacking, skeletal rhythm reflects the corporeal lyrics, which end with the repeated phrase, "I'll frame my life in the bones that I have left." It begs the question:, how much garbage have you put out in the world, and what will be left of it?Throughout Cowards, chords seem to be a thing of the past, the band relying on bass and guitar riffs that follow Judge's vocals, supporting them while in a constant state of tension and dissimilitude. Sometimes they twinkle (as a counterpoint to soaring bass on the Yorgos Lanthimos-inspired, lullabic title track), and sometimes they roar ("Blood on the Boulders"), but more often than not, they feel part of a composed whole, less (post-)punk and more orchestral.Because there is a lack of distortion or slashing, the album cuts at a fairly languid pace. Nevertheless, those with patient ears will sink right into the cold depths of Cowards, the sprawling songs and dense subject matter recalling the power of the album rather than a collection of disassociated singles.The carnal standout "Showtime!" features one of the album's most indicative lyrics: "I resist the urge / Of a quiet life," its music signifying funk and fucking in equal measure. The album-closing follow-up, "Well Met (Fingers Through Fences)," is its stately foil, lost in the daily struggle of monotony; the rat race, the suit and tie, the death march. An indictment of climate change and gentrification, the song is a harpsichord-and-brass-heavy, ash-covered epic, where the charred membrane from "Crispy Skin" is revealed to be the remnants of a T2-level nuclear explosion. As subs and crashes bring the album to a close, everything turns to dust, dying and ending, but the song keeps playing.Cataclysmic yet oddly satisfying — soothing, even — Cowards basks in the tranquility of demise and catastrophe. It watches the burning world and offers little advice for how to save it. Instead, it's an informative respite, a storybook where redemption isn't impossible, but it's hard-earned. On Cowards, Squid reveal themselves as possibly the most forward-thinking and artistic band of the new post-punk explosion. It's not an easy ride, but few of the best things are. The tentacles are calling; be brave, open your eyes, and dive into the inky darkness.