Squid talk expanding their horizons and exploring evil on third album 'Cowards' • Interview • DIY Magazine

“An album about evil.” That’s how Squid announced their new record, ‘Cowards’ – nine songs from the perspective of “real and imagined characters”. There’s just one problem with that description: it forgets to mention just how delightful these songs can be, even when they’re preoccupied with such wicked subject matter.

Following 2023’s knotty, folklore-adjacent ‘O Monolith’, the group’s third effort bears all the scope and thrilling prowess of their previous work – Squid are a band that delight in doing something the hard way just because – but wears it so much more lightly. Almost like pop art when sat next to the dense tapestries of their last album, the songs are shorter, the structures zip along, and it all feels like a television blaring with its saturation turned to the max. Instruments clang, ping and whoosh past, leaving you not quite enough time to work out what it is you’ve just heard before something else flashes into life.

“It’s probably the most fun I’ve had recording,” grins drummer and vocalist Ollie Judge, as bassist Laurie Nankivell nods alongside him. “We wrote our shortest songs ever, [which] is quite tricky for us. It’s nice to hear that it’s playful, because it does feel that way – often we’re quite contrasting, being five people who actively songwrite together. I think [on] this set of songs especially, there’s contrast between the lyrics and music.”

That’s not the only change of play. Marking a departure from their longtime work with Dan Carey – who was behind the desk for both previous albums, and still features on additional instrumentation here – this time around the band opted for Marta Salogni, who has produced for acts as diverse as Björk, black midi and Depeche Mode. “She has quite a wide-ranging CV,” Ollie explains. “We’re interested in the more experimental-leaning projects, but she’s also [worked with] pop stars. That disregard for genre – you’ve got to have no pretension at all.” Guitarist Anton Pearson agrees: “It was a complete vibe shift. Dan likes things to be very condensed and high energy, lots of ideas flying around, pursuing them very quickly, whereas Marta was much more considered, allowing things to take time.”

The band – completed by guitarist Louis Borlase, and keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter – brought in several other musicians this time around too – Clarissa Connelly, Tony Njoku, Pozi’s Rosa Brook and others can all be heard stepping in and out of the band’s circle across the album. “We [had] predominantly finished tracks,” explains Laurie, “but we’d [left] space for other instruments, vocalists, a string quartet. It was definitely the first album where we’ve gone in and felt slightly more relaxed about individual parts. I think we’ve all got better at allowing our darlings to be killed.”

“I think we’ve all got better at allowing our darlings to be killed.”

— Laurie Nankivell

All this joy - found via a new way of recording, and via the creative community the band have built around themselves - does feel in contrast to the album’s murky subject material; songs here touch on cannibalism, arson, murder, religion, and insanity. At what point did Ollie realise that was the direction this new material was headed in?

He thinks for a second. “Writing the music and writing the lyrics kind of exist on separate planes. I think we were writing three tunes at the same time, and they were all inspired by evil characters. I was finding that quite interesting so I just ran with it, really, [although] I wish we’d picked the word ‘morality’ for the press release. I think that’s more what it’s about, struggles of morality on a sliding scale – from huge moral decisions to more everyday decisions that everyone has to make.”

Another difference with ‘Cowards’ is how discrete the songs feel from one another – while past work has often felt like an ongoing epic poem, here the material feels more suited to an anthology series in the vein of Black Mirror. “I think it’s really episodic,” Ollie nods, “but it’s funny because whenever I’m writing lyrics, I use characters as a lens to think about things I’ve felt personally. Almost using [them] as hosts for my own view of events, or how I’m feeling at that time.”

Where that feels particularly apt here is the context of real-world evil against which the record is set. “The songs aren’t so grounded in all these real things that are going on right now, that are unspeakable and horrible,” Ollie explains, “but a lot to do with the guilt and the shame of feeling like you’re a bad person, because you could be doing more. It’s all kind of tied up in that. Even though the songs are more fantastical, that same feeling still carries over to the real life guilt and shame of wanting to do more, but maybe not being able to do more. Feeling like you’re too lazy to do more.” There’s a weighty silence, before Louis adds: “It’s quite scary to feel like you’re becoming apathetic.”

“It’s quite scary to feel like you’re becoming apathetic.”

— Louis Borlase

It’s hard to emphasise enough, though, that while the album’s lyrical focus is unequivocally dark, the music itself conveys a great deal of joy in the artistic process. Squid really give the impression of taking pride and delight in making music, and wanting to make that act as transparent as possible. Take The Library, for instance – an online shop of the band’s second-hand books; literally selling off the record’s literary influences. “I think it’s quite nice for people to have a little window into things that have helped inform the album,” Anton quips. “I don’t like bands trying to give the mystique that everything they do happens in an echo chamber. We’re not trying to save the world with our music, but it’s a good way of using our platform to point [to] people that are actually intelligent in their fields.”

As ever, the band are cautious to sound too self-aggrandising. “I never want it to come across as if we’re trying to say in any way that we’re more literary [than other bands],” Louis laughs, “but music and creation doesn’t come out of nowhere, it comes from everybody’s absorption of other people’s work. It’s interesting with an album like this, to look through it and think ‘there’s actually so much comedy in here, don’t take this too seriously’. It’s an album that we had fun making, there’s some difficult and chewy themes lyrically, but look at the fun we’ve had becoming inspired to make it.” Against a backdrop of “everyday evil,” the solution Squid have settled upon is to delight in everyday creation instead.

‘Cowards’ is out now via Warp.

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