by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood.bsky.social)
It’s hard to be a person in the world and not feel connected to the premise of Squid’s new album Cowards. The Bristol-via-Brighton band’s third full length explores nine stories of evil. It arrives amid persistent climate disaster, global conflict, and nuclear posturing that has the Doomsday Clock mere seconds from midnight. It’s also a surreal masterpiece by a band coming into their own.
To say Cowards is an enjoyable listen may seem like gaslighting, considering the subject matter. But in reflecting the unease of our times, Cowards sparkles in gorgeous high definition. The content may be dark but Squid’s music remains buoyant, retaining the band’s high-energy approach while fleshing out the songs with new sounds both real and constructed. According to the bandmembers—lead singer and drummer Ollie Judge, guitarists Louis Borlase and Anton Pearson, bassist Laurie Nankivell and keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter—this shift was intentional.
Post-Trash caught up with Laurie and Anton to talk about making the new album, saying more with less, the disappearing world via climate collapse and secretly recording your friends. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
Squid by Harrison Fishman
Post-Trash: I read in the presser that Cowards is the album you as a band wished you’d started with. In what sense?
Anton Pearson: I think the general vibe within the band is that (Cowards) is our favorite, or our best record. Maybe outside the band, everyone's thinking it's our worst. Who knows?
PT: You agree, Laurie?
Laurie Nankivell: I think it is my favorite, yeah. It does feel like we've stepped back a bit and taken a broader look on what’s expressed in the music.
PT: How so?
AP: Squid began playing together by writing music in each other's bedrooms. With Cowards, we’ve managed to mix in a lot of the stuff we've learned in the last ten years while saying more with fewer elements.
LN: In that the music feeling slightly sparser. Elements have their own space to grow and develop within the record.
AP: In that regard, this feels like our most mature record.
PT: From an outsider’s perspective, the album certainly has a richer sonic palette than previous Squid albums. How much did (producer) Marta Salogni have to do with that? Her Music for Open Spaces album is such a beautiful work of music.
LN: Marta Salogni definitely had a lot to do with it. It was a combination of her being a bit more hands-off combined with a warm record-to-tape approach. Plus, we knew wanted to take from different production techniques.
PT: Were there any techniques in particular that made a bigger impact on Cowards?
LN: We did a lot of sampling before recording the album. There’s a chaotic energy to the first two albums that came from being in the studio and throwing things against the wall to see what worked. This time, we knew more what we wanted.
PT: Anton, was there anything different in how you approached your performances for this album in comparison to the more-is-more approach of previous albums?
AP: That’s a good question. I've got a band mindset while we’re recording. I'm thinking about everyone else as much as I'm thinking about myself. In Squid, nobody really has ownership. That mindset is what helps give the band its flavor. But also, I was trying to embrace the softer, more tender moments. (For example) I used to play a lot of acoustic guitar in the band’s early days and for Cowards, I brought acoustic guitars back.
PT: Listening to Cowards the last few days, there seems to be more orchestration on this album. Was there a concerted effort to embrace a more acoustic instrument-driven approach, or am I just full of shit?
AP: No, you are shit-free. We wanted to build a more natural record. Some of the instruments were built with sounds we created—and Laurie was involved a lot in that process—but we also brought in instruments we hadn't used as much before. Arthur's dad is a harpsichord delivery man and tuner. He's got a selection of harpsichords at the house—they actually live just around the corner from where we did all the recording (Church Studios in Crouch End). So, he brought around a harpsichord, and we did a mixture of sampling it and playing it on the live takes.
PT: What do you think you’re going to remember about making Cowards ten years from now?
AP: It's always the small moments that end up sticking with you. I remember having to not only leave the room, but leave the whole studio, because Arthur was blasting timpani samples through a Marshall stack. That's the sound you can hear all the way through “Showtime!”—and he was having a great time! But if you're not, like, in the in the zone for that, it's just pure hell. It's torture. (laughs) So that's something I'll always remember. And then I'll always remember going to the bakery outside the studio.
PT: A bakery?
AP: To be fair, it was quite a good bakery.
PT: What was your order?
AP: Loads of different ones. On the last day (Cowards producer) Marta (Salogni) got us all little cupcakes with our faces printed on them. That was quite special.
PT: Sounds cute and delicious. Laurie, what will you remember?
LN: Recording in one place for an extended period of time is a rare moment of domestic respite in the life of a freelance touring musician. It was like I've got a day job where I cycle into work every morning, and it's quite nice. I have an hour cycle, I get in and I'm in this beautiful church-shaped studio, and yeah, then I go to the local bakery and grab my lunch.
PT: There’s a certain irony in that, no? From the perspective of someone whose life is built around that domesticity, there’s a romanticism about touring. And yet, when you live life on the road, having a bit of normalcy becomes the thing you’ll remember.
LN: Yeah, the fact that this domesticity happens quite rarely in our lives meant that it stuck out.
PT: So, you finish making this warm, expansive record, filled with harpsicord and orchestration and samples in a beautifully idyllic setting with a Mercury Prize-winning producer, enjoying all the comforts of the normal work-a-day life, then bam! You immediately head out for a year of touring supporting your second album, O Monolith, released the day you finish recording Cowards. What was that like?
LN: In some respects, it was a bit disorientating, but generally quite nice. There's often a lot of build up before a record, which can feel exhausting. But by being in the studio for the month before, it felt lovely. Recording is one of the most exciting parts of our job. And having that and then being able to go on tour with a fresh, creative headspace, there was something quite nice about it.
PT: Sounds surreal. But I guess Squid has always had a bit of a surrealist throughline in the music. Knowing this, and then with the passing of David Lynch, who often used surrealism to examine evil, which feels like exactly what you’re doing on Cowards—everything felt connected. Has Lynch been an inspiration to the band?
AP: It's really sad. Lynch was like a proper maverick creator, and that's everything you want to be as an artist. I don't know if I can point to a direct link between David Lynch and something on the new album. But as he's such an important part of bringing surrealism into mainstream culture, he's undoubtedly influenced lots of things that have influenced us. And I know Ollie (Judge, Squid singer/drummer), who wrote most of the lyrics on this album, is an absolutely massive fan of David Lynch. He's got a Twin Peaks tattoo on his ankle!
PT: Cowards does have a dreamy feel, from the arpeggiated Prophet that opens the album to the way the songs move together…
LN: I think surrealism is an influence as is a lot of (punk journalist and critical theorist) Mark Fisher's writings—which influenced our first album. He talks about specters and hauntology. These things have always filtered their way into our music.
PT: The stories on the album vary widely. There’s one about the Manson murders, one about the failure of calling someone out on their own bullshit, one about a dystopian world of cannibals. Of the nine vignettes, was there a particular one that resonated most with each of you personally? For example, I would say that “Well Met,” which is about climate change, is resonating with me right now as I watch wildfires rip through my home city of Los Angeles.
AP: I’d say “Well Met.” I wrote the lyrics about a place I used to visit as a kid, Dunwich, in the East of England, where the city is eroding into the sea. Obviously, quite a different aspect of climate change than fires burning, but it's all part of the same horrible package that we've signed ourselves up for. I’d read this book Shadowlands by Matthew Green about places in the British Isles that have been lost. Dunwich used to be quite a big port town, and now it's a tiny village. Basically, over the years, more and more of it's been lost to the cliff face. Then I was reading a book about William Blake by John Hicks, and he was connecting the way that Blake saw the world with the block universe theory, which is the theory that all of time exists in one big block and we just experience it in a linear fashion.
PT: So, on “Well Met” everything is constantly disappearing but also happening at the same time. How do we square that?
AP: You have to write a song in nine, is all (laughs).
PT: Laurie, is there a theme or a song that resonated with you?
LN: Probably the same, to be honest. We wrote “Well Met” quite late on in the process, and it felt like the most spacious of our tracks. Funnily enough, I went to Dunwich for the first time at Christmas, and I saw the last remaining Dunwich grave up on a cliff face and made some nice recordings of the space, including some lovely Norfolkian fishermen.
AP: We're going to use some of Laurie's recordings in the live show.
PT: You do a lot of field recording?
LN: I’ve done a few in the last two to three years. There’s a project I did last summer at a small music festival where I left a wireless microphone recording within a hanging light. And underneath this light, there was a sign that read, “Tell the light your inner desires.” We got all these recordings of friends telling this light all their inner desires, not knowing they were being recorded. We used the field recordings to make a soundscape for a performance a few days later.
PT: That’s fascinating. And creepy (all laugh)
LN: It was super interesting. I love the idea of live sampling. People hearing their own voices back elicits wonder in them.
PT: Were there any confessions you didn’t release because they were too personal?
LN: Well, there was a 20-minute philosophical battle between a Buddhist and our dear friend Joe who drank far too much which produced some great content. I think he's very proud and very happy for things to be shared, but I can imagine a slightly shyer human being might have been less keen.
PT: I look forward to hearing Joe’s take on the Noble Eightfold Path at the next Squid show. Best of luck to you with the release of Cowards. It’s a fantastic album.
AP: Thank you! And best of luck with the fires. We hope that gets easier for you and wish your city the best.
Cowards is out now via Warp.