Squid: Cowards (digital outlets)

When Edith Sitwell – no slouch herself in the peculiarity stakes – wrote her 1933 book The English Eccentrics she wasn't short of material.

Britain has long had a lineage of the mad, strange, amusing or inventive eccentrics. And they are often celebrated.

Being different – even if you are difficult – is more accepted in Britain than, say, in the US. Simply because the Brits are more used to seeing them acting out in public.

When it comes to music, eccentrics or the individualistic are attracted to the freedom of expression it allows.

Not all are as eccentric as Spike Milligan, Vivian Stanshall (of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) or Screaming Lord Sutch (who founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party which contested parliamentary elections).

But there is a long and valued lineage of artists who sidestep traditional expectations. Not eccentric exactly, but revelling in the permission to be different.

Squid out of Brighton are in that great British tradition of outlier bands who work beyond a specific genre but pull from many.

The lineage runs from early Pink Floyd and Soft Machine in the 1960s through post-punk bands (The Pop Group, This Heat, Rip Rig + Panic) to, more recently, the Beta Band and last year's enjoyably bewildering The New Sound by Geordie Greep of Black Midi.

You might not be sure what these idiosyncratic artists are doing but the ride is worth taking.

Squid's 2021 debut Bright Green Field sprung off influences from German bands like Faust, Neu! and Can in its undulating rhythms and monotone, with echoes of The Fall, Pere Ubu and Talking Heads.

In Britain it was in many “best of the year” selections. Here it barely made a ripple, despite being on the credible Warp label alongside Brian Eno, Flying Lotus and Battles.

This third album – recorded before their 2023 O Monolith was released – pulls singer/drummer Ollie Judges' vocals back from his declamatory style and febrile energy into something more menacing and whispered.

If the debut was their shouty, attention-getting “rock” album and O Monolith positioned them somewhere near their idea of pop (not your idea of it probably), Cowards is downbeat art music you can dance to.

Their tendency for noisy overkill is tempered to better present Judge's lyrics which speak of emotional dislocation (“Am I the bad one?” on Crispy Skin, “If you remind me, I'm evil too” on Fieldworks II), his unnerving and often murderous visions (“Frank's my friend, we tie them up” on Building 650) and dyspeptic observations: “All the houses in this country are built like shit. Dry-wall, well, I could put my fist through it if I wanted to” on Blood on the Boulders.

Judge pulls together images and thoughts like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles but what binds Cowards are the oceanic rhythms, the touches of minimalism which punctuate the album, white-knuckle moments and Judge trying to make sense of his world spinning off its axis: “Rows of bricks and boring homes, and the robot in my clothes” in the eight minute-plus Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence).

Not easy, but compelling and contemporary in its anxieties.

.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here

.