Cowards
by Squid
Squid, out of Brighton, are in the British tradition of outlier bands working beyond a specific genre but pulling from many.
The lineage runs from early Pink Floyd and Soft Machine in the 1960s through post-punk (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’re often not sure what these idiosyncratic artists are about but the ride is worth the admission price.
Squid’s 2021 debut Bright Green Field sprung off influences from German bands like Faust, Neu! and Can in its undulating rhythms and monotone, but also had 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 – apparently recorded before their second, 2023′s O Monolith was released – pulls singer/drummer Ollie Judge’s vocals back from his declamatory style and febrile energy into something more menacing and whispery.
The debut was shouty and attention-getting, and O Monolith positioned them near their idea of pop (not yours, probably), but Cowards is downbeat art music you can dance to.
Their noisy overkill is tempered to better present Judge’s lyrics 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 oceanic rhythms, the strings and minimalism punctuating 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.
The Purple Bird
by Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) has sailed close to country music in the past three decades, notably on 2004′s Greatest Palace Music recorded in Nashville with session musicians. Usually, he’s described as alt-country or alt-folk, but here – back in Nashville with co-writing guests John Anderson, the late John Prine’s son Tommy and Tim O’Brien among them – he’s in full, reflective folk-country mode.
Nothing much alt about it, especially when banjo and fiddle come out for the bar-room complaint of Tonight with the Dogs I’m Sleeping.
But mostly these are quiet, measured ruminations on life (Downstream, Is My Living in Vain?), loss (the moving Boise, Idaho) and universal love (the moody Sometimes It’s Hard to Breathe).
Understated arrangements for strings and pedal steel enhance these subtle, lovely songs which have a moral clarity.
These albums are available digitally, on vinyl and CD. Squid is also on cassette.
