If spending your Saturday night interrogating the nature of evil sounds like an impossibly hard sell, you’ve obviously not fallen for Cowards yet. Released in February, Squid’s acclaimed third album sets stories of cannibalism, cults and nuclear holocausts to some of the most adventurous arrangements of the Bristol band’s career, pinballing through post-rock, jazz fusion and kosmische. It’s nervy, knotty music designed to disorientate listeners, and with it the five-piece have bagged themselves a load more willing victims.
Presumably, many of these made it to Camden for the final night of the band’s European tour. If they did, they were joining the sort of die-hard fans who successfully formed a circle pit for the jittery prog of The Blades.
Despite the rabid reception, Squid proved a curiously ego-less proposition, remaining calmly industrious beneath cryptic hanging banners with slogans like ‘An Anxiety Dream’ and ‘Really Fake and Insincere’. On record, singing drummer Ollie Judge can come over like a coiled spring, but live he appeared very much in control, grinning mischievously between Mark E Smith-eque yelps. The overall impression was of a band effortlessly in sync, deftly navigating sudden, violent shifts in tone and tempo with an unspoken chemistry that bordered on telepathy.
You could hear that connection on human flesh-themed opener Crispy Skin, as Louis Borlase hugged Judge’s vocal with his exploratory guitar playing, before suddenly unleashing shards of feedback at the visceral, cello-streaked climax. Similarly, Showtime! seamlessly juxtaposed Arthur Leadbetter’s zig-zagging synth arps with twitchy guitars plus violin by additional musician Rosa Brook, while Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence) utilised the latter’s vocals alongside sonorous trumpet, harpsichord and incidental percussion courtesy of Zands Duggan.
It was a set of contrasts, often within the same song. On Swing (In A Dream), from the band’s second album O Monolith, a sense of creeping unease was momentarily allayed by resonant, accordion-style synths. 2021’s GSK remains the closest thing Squid have to a pop hit, albeit one combining discordant brass, intricate polyrhythms and heavily distorted guitar effects that brought to mind Graham Coxon at his most abstract.
Alluding to the band’s growth over the past decade, Judge quipped, ‘We do encores now!’ before launching into a truly visceral one-two of early single Broadcaster and Narrator from their debut album Bright Green Field. The former saw three of the five band members hunched over synths, while the latter featured a gripping performance from frequent collaborator Martha Skye Murphy.
Writhing with her back to the audience and whipping her waist-length black hair, she helped work the audience up into a frenzy, her primal howls bolstering an already-oppressive wall of dissonance. For a set that saw Squid make thrillingly few concessions artistically, it proved a suitably evil ending.
