Squid are coming out of hiding

“Cowards seems like the most fantasy of our records, just because it’s a lot of stories, and it’s so wildly unbelievable and so far away from anything that we’ve ever experienced,” Judge continues. It might seem like a moot point – given their sophomore record gave us a song from the ​​perspective of someone reincarnated as a chest of drawers, and one about summoning the devil at the entrance to a burial chamber in Marlborough, Wiltshire. Yet the post-punk troupe explain how their experiences touring have shaped this new collection of songs, and how they’ll never be satisfied sounding the same.

“It kind of comes from traveling around the world and, like, reading different books from those different countries,” finishes Judge, remarking on the new direction of Cowards before Borlase picks up the thought: “There’s always a little bit of a sensation of you’re not really here,” he begins, deftly describing the in-between state of being a stranger in a new place, a place that you can see and touch but can never fully grasp. “It’s like that blurring of facts and fiction, and perspective is always something that you are quite aware of. And then coupled with the jet lag and the fact that you’re then flying out of the country again in the next sort of eight hours?” he laughs – “the whole thing can make you feel a bit seasick.”

It’s cheap to say that listeners should expect the unexpected from Squid. Just as O MONOLITH saw a transition in story and style compared to their critically acclaimed debut, Bright Green Field – with the former embracing the political punk of it all, while the latter shifting to root itself in folklore as a means to express similar societal frustrations – Cowards, too, sees a kind of transformation for Squid. But perhaps that is also cheap to say. For Squid, change – whether stylistic, lyrical, or even how they perform live (the band saw huge success in their experimental seated gigs during COVID restrictions) – is natural. It happens as they write, impacted by the ways they grow as much as by the places they see or media they consume. There is no sense of contrarianism in it, no deliberate desire to keep people guessing what each next single might sound like.

“It would have been easier for us to basically write another album similar to O MONOLITH,” Borlase says of the experience writing their latest release, underpinned by fresh, travel-inspired perspectives. “I think we were keen to write in a way that’s a bit more exposing, so there are thinner textures and instruments that were untreated a lot more. We finally got there in terms of confidence and believing that we can write in that way, because it is really exposing and really hard. There’s fewer places to hide on this record.”

The challenge, then, was not to overcomplicate things, but to trust the material to speak for itself, to trust that they know what they’re doing, without the weight of excess. Part of this new direction involved a conscious decision to bring in collaborators, expanding the creative ecosystem that surrounds their music. In the past, Squid had always been a tight-knit unit, but they speak to the ways that working with others allowed them to push beyond their own self-imposed boundaries. “We can’t do everything,” Judge exclaims, causing a trickle of laughter from the other sides of the screen. “It’s always really interesting to kind of brainstorm who would elevate certain tracks. It’s always a really fun process,” he continues. It’s these deliberate choices that keep Squid on their toes, always changing, and keep their listeners excited. What could have been a more self-contained project became something richer and darkly alive.

Just as collaboration breathed new life into the album, Cowards takes a breath of its own, with characteristic complexity that here is more about space than speed. Settled down are the frenetic time signatures that once demanded calculation and precision, replaced instead with a more traditional approach. “There isn’t any track where I have to perform with a calculator at the same time,” jokes Judge, while assuring that their “mathematically spicy” songs are still present. “It’s quite reactionary to the last record,” he continues. “I think we wanted things to be a little bit more straightforward than the last record. It’s kind of strangely experimental for us.”

In a way, it’s oxymoronic – for a band that has built its reputation on challenging conventions to now experiment by tampering down their avant-garde flourishes, untangling their twisting compositions. But with this third record, the art-rockers’ goal wasn’t to outdo themselves in complexity but to distill and delve into their own sound. “This felt a lot more like we were focused on what it feels like to explore these pieces of music as short stories, things that are just focused on good songwriting, and how we can play together and enjoy making music and having fun,” Borlase shares on how the band broke away from the echo chamber of lockdown and post-lockdown writing, where they often leant into intense obsessions and intricate focus points (didn’t we all), and instead shifted towards a more open exploration of what they can write.

None of this, however, comes at the cost of the experimental spirit that defines Squid. A series of dark fairytales, Cowards delves into the murky world of human corruption – each song from the perspective of a different evil. When asked why, Judge laughs: “I’d like to think that I’m not an evil person,” he begins, “so writing in the shoes of people who are so far removed from how I live my life is quite an interesting thing to do.”

Squid wrench their way through dystopian worlds, taking inspiration from various pieces of media to form an amalgam of depravity – from the cannibalistic Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica to Ryu Murikami’s In the Miso Soup. Much like their sound, Squid’s not-quite-a-concept-album is just as texturally rich. “It’s not as black-and-white a subject, you know? There are degrees to why people do bad things. And it’s just…” Judge pauses, as if suddenly hit with the enormity of it all, “just a massive, massive thing to write about.”

It’s perhaps the most ‘Squid’ thing about Cowards: their sheer fascination with the stories and music they’re creating. It’s what allows them to stay true to their unadulterated and abrasive self, no matter where they go musically or how many layers they shed.

Light and dark, experimentation and tradition, Cowards exemplifies the fine thread on which the post-punk outfit have walked their career: balancing contradictions without feeling the need to resolve them. Consistently as introspective as they are expansive, Squid may not be hiding anymore, but in the process of revealing themselves, they only promise to make their music more captivating, more enigmatic, and more human. Sometimes, the boldest move is knowing when to step aside and let the music speak for itself.