Squid - Cowards (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Squid’s new album 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. Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album: simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics. The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. On additional production is longtime shifu and collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York. Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton. Their debut album Bright Green Field (2021) arrived as the world was starting to open up after the pandemic and they broke into the top 5 in the UK chart. In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding O Monolith, which took the band all over the world and broke new ground that hardly seemed possible years prior.

AllMusic Review by Timothy Monger
U.K. combo Squid have an elasticity that allows them to leap outward in multiple directions while always snapping back to their core sound. Their debut, Bright Green Field, was their most kinetic, while its follow-up, O Monolith, funneled the band's energy into more exploratory and progressive avenues. On Cowards, they introduce a unified theme that they've juxtaposed against some of their brightest and most melodic tracks to date. Generally speaking, Cowards is an album about evil. Under that black umbrella, Squid examine murder, narcissism, weakness, ego, and general wrongdoing. These subjects dovetail quite nicely into the group's already anxious post-punk style, though, interestingly, the album feels more exciting than grim. Over a decor of shimmering arpeggios and harpsichord, singer/drummer Ollie Judge applies cold, demented glee to "Crispy Skin," a song about cannibalism. "Building 650" is another standout with a gorgeous string arrangement that explores a protagonist too weak to disavow a friend who is clearly evil. The psych-Krautrock epic "Cro-Magnon Man" spans millennia of darkness, past the age of humanity. There are references to the Manson murders and other bleak tales of tragedy, alienation, and cowardice, where characters are seemingly unable to oppose darker forces. However, where their lyrics fail to uplift, Squid are, as ever, a uniquely propulsive unit who seem to recycle their own energy and maintain that patent elasticity throughout. The arrangements here are surprisingly ornate, bordering on chamber pop. There is a heavier reliance on acoustic instrumentation, strings, brass, and odd percussion as well as guest vocalists like Rosa Brook, Clarissa Connelly, and Tony Njoku. Aiding and abetting the band are producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks and mixing engineer John McEntire. Squid are still in the early part of their career, but with each record, they've shown a remarkable adaptability and willingness to change, without losing what makes them special.

Tracklist
01 - Crispy Skin
02 - Building 650
03 - Blood on the Boulders
04 - Fieldworks I
05 - Fieldworks II
06 - Cro-Magnon Man
07 - Cowards
08 - Showtime!
09 - Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)