Squid - Bright Green Field
Squid’s bizarre genre bending music is back in the form of a debut album. Much awaited would be an understatement.
It’s pretty much what you’d expect from the New Wave group: woozy drone and frenetic, yet mechanical, rhythms. The most obvious strength of the album is the clarity and remarkable synergy on show. With Dan Carey at the production helm, the album is given a Dogrel (Fontaines D.C.) treatment. It’s sucked dry. It’s probably intended to serve the same purpose that it did on Dogrel: show just how tight and intricate their music is. Though, this is to a much better effect than it was on Dogrel.
Narrator is the best single release by a long shot. The build-up is carefully curated, and the synth noises and the vocals from Martha Skye Murphy break up the texture. It also has a slightly different mix to the single version; it allows more time to breathe at the end. It connects and locks-in to what feels like a very genuine creation. It is poppy where it matters, but experimental and exciting when it needs to be.
Boy Racers shows Squid’s great potential when working with 8-minute songs. Halfway through, the track breaks into a psychedelic mystic drone. Vocoder-d lyrics pour dread into the otherwise embryonic fuzz. Like a monastic chant put through a dirty fuzz box, it presents the more recent spiritual-stroke-electrodirection of Squid.
On tracks like Paddling, their influences are clear. The driving relentlessness of the Kraut-y psychedelia of Neu! and Can are overt. But there’s also thespacious, empyrean textures of La Düsseldorf and Brian Eno. The anxiousness of James Chance and the Contortions also comes through loud and clear. OllyJudge’s unhinged vocals and the band’s jagged rhythms reek of that particular New Wave twitchiness.
The record isn’t quite perfect. The melodies are less addictive than they could be, and occasionally the structures feel a bit too familiar. Some of the longertracks, with similar frenetic builds, somewhat cheapen the band’s experimentation.
Global Groove probably asserts the purpose of Bright Green Fields with the greatest clarity and Judge’s paranoid squeals sustain this, accompanied by a mournful sax. He takes aim at almost anything modern and articulates the very helplessness that Squid are attempting to evoke. Olly Judge screeches: ‘What’s your favourite war on TV? Just before you go to sleep. And then your favourite sitcom, watch the tears roll down your cheek. Global Groove, Global Groove. I’m so sick and tired of dancing…’
Peel St is a standout album track, the rhythms and interplay between all the noises is phenomenal. The build doesn’t cheapen anything, unlike a few of the other tracks. A drone-like hum builds the tension and the release is delivered with sharp dexterity. It’s got to be one of the best first three minutes of a track this year. A glitchy synthesiser and bass combine digital and strings flawlessly while the lyrics morph the rhythms. It seamlessly shifts dynamics from agitatedand anxious to gentle and fluid. It clearly exhibits Squid’s capability for sonic experimentation within the frame of pop-music.
The album clearly exemplifies Squid’s technical excellence. Like a tightly wound machine, they work like pistons, multi-levelled and polyphonic. But it feels a bit lacking in soul at times, and their slow builds, without much melodic charm are almost too mechanical. But maybe that’s just what they want you to feel. It won’t leave you breathless, but you’ll feel like something special has happened.
8/10
