by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
At the heart of Squid’s third LP is a statement imprinted on each of its narrator's tongues, “We are cowards.” You can hear it in their words, how they squirm to justify their failure, their passivity, and how evil is allowed to seep in with such banality. When a band says they're going to write an album on evil, one might expect the usual suspects of songs from the perspectives of destroyed victims, helpless bystanders, and vicious killers. While Cowards does have some figures of that middle variety, it never fully accepts their helplessness. Cowards is an album about how evil happens and how people let it occur, yet it's not an album of vicious rage or overbearing moralization. Rather, it’s the band's most emotive work yet, one that seems to yearn desperately for some redemption.
This new emotiveness is primarily conveyed through a series of new sonic motifs. While lead single “Crispy Skin” is a clear evolution of Squid’s signature manic kraut-punk they’ve perfected, it's almost a misdirect. The direct continuation of what the band has established only leads into the new terrain they’ve uncovered. That terrain is littered with strings thanks to Johnny Greenwood collaborators the Russi Quartet, who feature heavily across the album's woe-filled moments. Their dramatic arrangements pluck out new dimensions within the band's songwriting, the increased melodic capability transforming the group's repetitive grooves into moments closer to dreamy neo-psych. It's evident from their first appearance on “Building 650” where they play against the band's Unwound-esque post-hardcore stomp with baroque orchestration. The effect is stunning, transforming the “Into The Miso Soup” inspired tale from a story of a bystander's mania to a portrayal of their inner turmoil and guilt budging up against their failure.
That’s perhaps the core difference between Cowards and Squids' previous album: the near absence of mania. On tracks like “Narrator” and “Houseplants,” drummer/vocalist Ollie Judge manages to establish himself as a near James Chance-level shrieker. Here, his menace is far more deadpan. On the excellent “Blood On The Boulders,” it's closer to the spoken word drawl of Slint’s Brian McMahon. At other points, it's profoundly vulnerable, almost folk-like. There's still a slight uncanny dart to his delivery that keeps everything on edge, a fray to stop the image looking too perfect on paper. Musically this move away from mania is clear in the songwriting as well. This is an album dotted with moments of melancholic serendipity, as the mournful horns ache across the title track in a tone dislocated between a dirge and a parade. Even the moments of chaos feel distinctly controlled such as the endlessly climaxing middle of “Blood On The Boulders,” which builds with a tension that never fully breaks. Or the nightmarish “Showtime” where mutant funk melts into a nightmarish drone that fades into a simple phrase of “I just laugh.”
These moments create a subtle discomfort permeating throughout the album. Cowards endlessly alludes to freedom and revolt as a source of fear, sensations its narrators are too weak to embrace. It’s this fear Squid has a deep sympathy towards. The album's true coda is the chorus of its central track “Fieldwork II,” where the protagonist mumbles repeatedly, “I forgot what it’s like/I forgot what I’m like.”
While Cowards is inspired by the grotesque literature of Haruki Murakami and Ottessa Moshfegh, it's also a clear response to a world in flames. Nothing shows this understanding of fear better than the album's closing lines “The futures perfect/From the backseat.” But these aren’t lines the band agrees with and Cowards shows it. With its charging rhythms and gorgeous melodies, it appears as the band's most impassioned work yet. A demand rather than a cry for its listeners to attempt to defeat their cowardice, and to not ignore the evil in their own lives lest they become it.