It seems fitting that Brighton, a city of youth culture and protest, is the starting point for a band like Squid. Their debut album Bright Green Field is a real statement: musically complex, energetic and entirely made up of new material. This record suggests a band that are determined to grow, as Bright Green Field balances the urgency and rawness of youth with elaborate and dark metaphors of social turmoil. Squid’s debut is also on track to become a classic for those who like their intelligently articulated yet angry post-punk and math rock, and more generally for those rock listeners who admire musical experimentation that still respects melody.
Ollie Judge’s crew mirrors the existentialism and eeriness of bands like Burial, Swans, and Broadcast and the album is riddled with the weirdness of distorted song outros, like on “Boy Racers”, married to short and strange interludes like “Resolution” and “Flyover”. There are also noisy “interruptions” that disturb the flow of compositions and lots of thoughtful background narrations, but this isn’t a record overly loaded with pretension. There are plenty of groovy beats that can be danced and moshed to: just check out “G.S.K” and “Paddling”. In fact, listening to Bright Green Field ramps up that nagging longing for live music that we’ve all felt over the last year, especially when it comes to the irresistible build ups on “Narrator” and “Pamphlets” – at over eight minutes each, two of the longest compositions on the album.
Squid’s new record will resonate with audiences of the more challenging sounds of Black Midi, with whom they share producer Dan Carey, while also appealing to fans of the rawer Pigsx7 and the commercially successful Idles. And while it is incredible that Judge can drum like this and shout/sing at the same time, it is evident from Bright Green Field that Squid are not about an egotistical frontman but a rare and promising artistic cohesion where talented musicians complement each other’s ideas.
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