Squid had an all-timer back in 2021 with their debut album Bright Green Field, and the experimental post-punks delivered a satisfactory return with sophomore effort O Monolith. Now the UK quintet — Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell and Anton Pearson — are back with their third studio album, Cowards.
The Marta Salogni, Grace Banks and Dan Carey-produced record arrives February 7 via Warp Records, and the band have previewed it today with a Takashi Ito-directed video for new single "Crispy Skin," which Judge explained is "lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel Tender Is the Flesh I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets."
He added, "I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult. If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance."
Judge shared that Cowards finds the band leaning into "simple ideas that resonate," when stacked up against the density and complexity of O Monolith: "Touring fed into this record in a way that I didn't initially realize. Every song has a specific place anchored to it, places that all five of us have visited together, like New York, Tokyo and Eastern Europe."
Hear "Crispy Skin" below, where you can also find Cowards' tracklist.
Cowards:
1. Crispy Skin
2. Building 650
3. Blood on the Boulders
4. Fieldworks I
5. Fieldworks II
6. Cro-Magnon Man
7. Cowards
8. Showtime!
9. Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence)