Squid… word?
[Video]
[6.11]
Thomas Inskeep: This Brighton-based quintet sound like fIREHOSE with a soupçon of Television, plus horns — in 2020! Angular, knotty post-punk art-rock: what, I ask you, is not to like?!
[9]
Tim de Reuse: If you’re gonna do the post-punk half-talky thing you need some personality. I think this guy’s got something unique to him, and his most aggressive moments hint at a mood that isn’t usually touched on in this genre, even if his style is indebted heavily to David Byrne’s yelpiest qualities. What’s disappointing is the band; they’re technically spot-on, and the groove is pleasingly tight, but there’s way too much restraint in both the arrangement and the mix. Like, come on, you went to the trouble of getting a brass section in there and you can’t be bothered to ask it to make some noise?
[7]
Alfred Soto: Organ, trumpet solo, tempo change — a lot’s going on. The commotion obscures a dodgy if not risible conceit about cutting a “red” vs “blue” wire — they both freak him out. Sure, buddy.
[6]
Ryo Miyauchi: His yelps will be mistaken for the frontman of Parquet Courts by me. His band’s music, too, lies somewhere in the middle of ramshackle garage-rock and antsy post-punk. The difference between him and the other guy is that he’s eager to show off that he can scream, which can be distinguishing but it’s not at all impressive when he fails to convince that his issues are worth screaming about. “Well, they all look the same to me,” he yawns about the boring products of today before making a fuss to humor him with something more interesting. But my guy, have you heard yourself?
[4]
Vikram Joseph: Oh good, it’s another Post-Punk Man With Vocal Affectations, just in case Black Midi and Fontaines D.C. hadn’t bestowed enough gifts upon us in that department last year. Thing is, the guitar/bass interplay on “Match Bet” is exquisite, settling quickly into a gorgeous, serpentine flicker of a groove which recalls Sonic Youth at their most beguilingly melodic. Letting Ollie Judge (more of a singing drummer than a drumming singer, it’s fair to say) spill his cartoonish vocals over this canvas is sort of like allowing someone to spray-paint a dick on a Monet. There’s little charisma, and even less content. When he disappears somewhere around the midway point, the seething, dusty, jazz-western instrumental build into a krautrock outro is a masterclass in controlled dynamics, easily enough to salvage the song. I was reminded of another experimental rock song which, like “Match Bet,” involves shouting about different coloured wires. What exactly is Travis Morrison doing these days? Imagine how good Squid would be with him in front of the mic.
[7]
Brad Shoup: I dunno if Squid nailed the voice of the Sonic Youth fan from whom this song sprung, but their Sonic Youth voice is dead on. They turn a decent chunk of the back half over to warm-up horns talking over psych-guitar longueurs, but that was a lot of my listening twenty years ago so I don’t mind one bit.
[7]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Recalls Pere Ubu, The Sound, and The Dismemberment Plan. It’s all a bit too clean in its knottiness to be exciting though. The horn-created fog is a nice touch — it adds some depth to a song that’s ready to drown in its self-seriousness.
[5]
Iain Mew: As British indie gets less and less mainstream space, more and more of it is taken up by bands doing this abrasive polymath thing. Let’s Eat Grandma and Everything Everything have made some of my favourite indie of recent years, so I’m not against it, but it does take a lot to stand out in that field, and Squid haven’t got there yet. They’re good at the cacophonous bits (nice brass touches) but the Art Brut-style absurd declaiming of the vocals calls out for a sense of humour which never arrives. Worse, the initial loose groove just makes me think of one of those relative distance in time things, i.e. did you know that we’re now further away from Alt-J’s An Awesome Wave than that was from Radiohead’s In Rainbows?
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: The hyper-normalisation and hyper-availability of gambling — particuarly sports betting — was, if not exactly a new development, a scandal of the last decade. For every exhortation to BET BOOST YOUR ACCA NOW LADS, addiction becomes more casual; small wonder that a game propped up by such a nakedly cancerous industry had the audacity to spend a weekend promoting thought about mental health without a hint of internal reflection. “Match Bet” is as expansive as the issue itself, burgeoning with the same incessance and a helpful fraction of its underlying solemnity. Squid talk of the man who inspired it with an affection that with an uncharitable eye might border patronising, but they nevertheless do well to convey that being him may not have been as fun as being with him.
[6]