by Anna Solomon (@chateau.fiasco)
In 2021, Squid’s Bright Green Field was a weird and angsty enough post-punk album to cut through what’s been a seemingly never-ending deluge of kinda weird and angsty post-punk albums. Now, like many of their contemporaries, they’ve drifted into a sound that’s less direct and angry with more prog rock influence. While Black Midi and Black Country, New Road have veered hard into theatricality, whether it be through absurd virtuosity or intense emotionality, Squid make the move in a way that retains more indie-rock dejection.
Opener and lead-off single “Swing (Inside a Dream)” kicks the album off with a 7/8 synth sequence. Instruments file in gradually- first a Don Caballero-esque mathy tapped guitar, then some electronic percussion, then a four-on-the-floor (seven-on-the-floor?) kick and heavy synth bass. As the instrumentation builds, the composition seems to leap higher, but also weigh itself down further. The bass’ exit on the first chorus helps to lift it, and it hits all the harder with bass the second time around. It’s a brash and lumbering track by the end, one of the heaviest on the album.
“Devil’s Den,” following immediately after, starts off eerily quiet. The woodwinds would feel pastoral if the guitar tone under them wasn’t so metallic. It takes nearly two minutes before the drums crash in for a loud-quiet moment that also feels very indebted to 70’s prog with its synth textures. The song’s closing stretch is an anxious charge forward, full of angular guitars and layers of synth noise.
Most of the songs follow this same pattern, starting quiet with one or two instruments and building into cacophonous layers of noise. There’s enough difference in tempo, meter, and feel across the tracks to keep things fresh, but the album undoubtedly has a formula, and some songs can lack distinction. The only song to significantly subvert this formula is the kinetic late-album highlight “Green Light.” It’s a frantic cut more-or-less from the get-go, but the midsection eases up on the dissonant guitars and electronic noise before the song catapults you back into the frenzy. Chaotic lyrics about traffic signs and symbols seem to express being unable to read, think, or escape.
These propulsive and exciting moments are generally where O Monolith is at its best, paying off the tension it takes its time to build. “The Blades” is the most effective build, feeling like a superhero fight scene as the frantic drums and shouted vocals combine with cinematic strings in the midsection. On the other hand, “After the Flash,” with its slower pace, feels like it takes too long to get where it’s going, even if the ending is ultimately satisfying.
When describing the lyrics, lead vocalist and drummer Ollie Judge said that O Monolith is an attempt to write a spiritual record that came out cynical. He wanted to write about reincarnation and seeing life in other ways, so we have “Undergrowth,” a song about being reincarnated as a nightstand. It’s the longest song on the record, not by a large margin, and also the grooviest. When faced with the idea of being a practical but immobile object, Judge concludes he’d rather “MELT MELT MELT MELT,” producing the album’s most memorable hook. Judge sounds less aggressive than he did on Bright Green Field, both in his delivery and in the lyrics which are rarely direct or political, working more as a vehicle to establish some odd imagery and give him something to sing-talk with quirky falsetto flips.
This combination of spirituality and cynicism also reflects the sound of O Monolith. For all the strings, woodwinds, and layers of hand percussion, it’s colder and harsher than Bright Green Field was. It’s more complicated, but never flashy. While it occasionally soars cinematically, it also occasionally struggles to get off the ground. Ultimately, any spiritual instincts Squid may have had feel like grass growing out from between blocks of sidewalk. The album, like it’s cover, is almost all concrete, but not quite. It’s often heavy, drab, and impenetrable, but also brimming with unkempt life and color.