Squid are as curious as ever in their third studio album, ‘Cowards’. Their songs are often stories that understand the lives of others. The sounds they make are often an attempt at understanding moods, contrasts and complexity. These elements may not always go together seamlessly, but the results in ‘Cowards’ are both freaky and fascinating.
Since their inception, the Brighton prog-rock band have been literary and technical without ever feeling stuffy. They made a motorik party out of the repetition of a service worker’s life in the 2019 single ‘The Cleaner’. In ‘Pamphlets’, the climactic final track of their 2021 debut album ‘Bright Green Field’, the isolation felt by a modern antisocial man mounts terrifyingly as the band builds into a hypnotic, irresistible groove.
Even if ‘Cowards’ is uncharacteristically dark for Squid – here, there are cult leaders, serial killers, cannibals, sociopaths – they aren’t interested in the gruesome details as they are about the uncanny psychology of it all. “It’s not as black-and-white a subject, you know? There are degrees to why people do bad things,” drummer and vocalist Ollie Judge told The Line of Best Fit. With ‘Cowards’, they write vignettes of unexplainable evil and match it with music that is often explosive and adventurous.
Take ‘Crispy Skin’, which resembles the post-punk ferocity of their earlier work. The synth melodies are sprightly and comforting as Judge sings about the urge to kill and consume people. “We love their crispy skin / ‘Cause it’s something that we crave,” the protagonist, surrendering to their nature, contemplates: “One hit right between the eyes / It’s become so easy to take a life.”
‘Building 650’ tells the perspective of a disaffected man who doesn’t care that his friend may be evil because “Frank’s my friend”, Judge sings. The dramatic ‘Blood On The Boulders’ grapples with the perverse, though effective, magnetism of cult leaders. ‘Fieldworks II’ and ‘Showtime!’ read like the inner monologues of people who are both timid and resentful, aggravated by the world around them while afraid of their slippery sense of self.
The whole time, instrumentally, Squid are pulling punches or letting loose at unexpected turns. Though more collaborative than their past works, the chaotic brew of ‘Cowards’ is still focused and potent. Aside from the guitarwork and ambient detours, strings glide through ‘Building 650’ like a trail of fire, while the harpsichord stabs on ‘Fieldworks I’ and ‘Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)’, along with the lush horns of the title track, find beauty in uncertainty.
‘Cowards’ sees Squid attempt their biggest juggling act of dissonance yet. The band have found confidence in their literary imagination – Judge cited horror novels like Ryo Murakami’s In The Miso Soup and Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is The Flesh as reference points for ‘Cowards’ – but they bristle at making the music sound just as hellish. Not that the end result is pretty, of course. It’s just Squid finding dimensions in everything they do, even in depravity.
