Squid announce their third studio album, Cowards

Cowards is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong. The first single, “Crispy Skin”, features a tense and paranoid sounding Ollie Judge tearing through a richly imagined dystopian world, with the sharpest lyricism partly inspired by the book Tender Is The Flesh, where cannibalism becomes the norm.

“Crispy Skin was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets," Judge explains. "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.”

The accompanying music video for “Crispy Skin” was directed by Takashi Ito which adapts his award-winning experimental short film Zone (1995). "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," he explains.

For additional voice and instruments, on the album – which follows last year's O Monolith, and their 2021 debut album, Bright Green Field – 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.

Tracklist:

1. Crispy Skin
2. Building 650
3. Blood on the Boulders
4. Fieldworks I
5. Fieldworks II
6. Cro-Magnon Man
7. Cowards
8. Showtime!
9. Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)