Squid

English art-rock quintet Squid announce their new album, Cowards, out February 7th via Warp Records, and share its lead single “Crispy Skin.” Now on their third album, the band — Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, and Anton Pearson — branch out, exploring textures of folk, kosmische, psychedelia, jazz and electronic music. Cowards features nine distinct tales of human evil punched by vantablack comedy. Real and imagined characters wade into the dark ocean between right and wrong while protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album to date, simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics.

On album opener “Crispy Skin,” a fluttering of synths are quickly met by a driving rhythm section beneath a tense and paranoid Judge, before acoustic piano is introduced to the mix. “‘Crispy Skin’ was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel Tender Is The Flesh I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets. I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult.” Judge continues and admits, “if I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”

The accompanying video, directed by Takashi Ito, is an adaptation of his award-winning experimental 1995 short film Zone. Ito explains: “A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images.”

On Cowards, Squid achieve something new and strangely preternatural. While their previous records 2021’s Bright Green Field and O Monolith, “one of the most impressively creative rock records to grace 2023” (Consequence), dealt with quintessentially British themes lyrically and sonically, Cowards sees the band looking outward. Borlase states, “We were thinking of an album of great songwriting. Simple ideas that resonate in a very different way to O Monolith, which was dense and complex.” Judge adds: “Touring fed into this record in a way that I didn’t initially realize. Every song has a specific place anchored to it, places that all five of us have visited together, like New York, Tokyo, and Eastern Europe.” 

For additional voice and instruments, Squid called on distinguished friends and musicians: Danish experimental songsmith Clarissa Connelly, composer, pianist and singer Tony Njoku, Rosa Brook from punk group Pozi, percussion wizard Zands Duggan, and Jonny Greenwood collaborators the Ruisi Quartet for violin, viola and cello. The range of sound allowed Squid to push out further, writing arrangements that build into crescendo before sheer-drops into discrete melody. Fleeting voices in eerie rounds, evoke prehistoric song and nursery rhyme.

The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producer Marta Salogni and Grace Banks, with additional production by longtime collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed by John McEntire (Tortoise) before being mastered by Heba Kadry.