Weekend Reading: Squid
Last June saw the release of ‘O Monolith’, the second studio album from Squid. Following the raging success of their debut effort ‘Bright Green Field’ hitting number one on the UK Indie charts, the five-piece began the creation of their subsequent record only a matter of weeks later.
The result is an enigmatic collection of tracks with a massive new industrial sound, perfectly embodying the album’s title - the music almost as vast and mysterious as a monolith itself. With the band out on a huge UK tour, kicked off with two dates in their hometown of Bristol, we sat down with Louis Borlase to talk about genre constraints, AI albums, and why you shouldn’t shout “Houseplants” at their shows.
As ‘O Monolith’ approaches the six-month-old mark, how are you feeling about the record now? Has your perception of it changed since its release, and how do you find that it's translated to live performances?
Shit, Six months? I didn't realise… that’s crazy. It’s been a little more exciting for us than ‘Bright Green Field’ in terms of working out how to create live versions of it, I’d say. Our music is a little bit more complex to recreate live with the same sonic effect as what you’d experience when you listen to the record, so we’ve been a little bit more creative when thinking about live arrangements and changing instrumentation. Then, when we do have the privilege of performing with additional players, we have to work out how to bring them in in a way that’s not just making a carbon copy of what’s already on the record.
““We’re all super proud of it and it’s done what we set out to do with a second record, which was ultimately never anything more than just to challenge ourselves” ”
And how do you feel about the album itself, as it is on record? How do you feel it’s aged within your perception?
Good! We had so long after recording it before it came out, so I kind of went in and out of “I like this bit” and “I forgot about this.” But yeah, as a whole, we’re all super proud of it and it’s done what we set out to do with a second record, which was ultimately never anything more than just to challenge ourselves and try and defy self-expectations. It was an exercise in both implicitly being like, “As a band, we’re gonna keep making music together, and we’re gonna keep trying to get better at doing that,” as well as “Let’s just have a lot of fun and make another record that we get excited about.”
In that sense, you must feel like you have quite a lot of freedom to just kind of run with whatever themes that you’re working with at the time…
I guess we’ve given each other quite a lot of freedom, in terms of letting stuff have a bit of air time before we have to make a final call on whether something’s going to be on the album or not. It’s a lot of freedom, but it’s a lot of trust. We were really lucky with the mad experiment that we pulled off with ‘Bright Green Field’, and how it was received so well by our friends, our audience, and the label. I think it’s always about trust, where it’s like, “That kind of worked, so why don't you try this?” Maybe this project is a little bit more mental. I wonder where the end is? Maybe we’re pushing it.
Image: Lucy Evans
‘Bright Green Field’ was a tough act to follow, and I think you did a really good job in doing that. I know the art world, music or otherwise, influences the writing a lot, and that’s reflected in the videos – so how important is that to you?
I think a lot of the reason why different art forms and notions come into our music so much is because five people are part of a collaborative project. If we were a band that had one person who was like “Right, we’re gonna write an album about this, and I’m going to write these parts, and then you guys can try and learn how to play them…” I think we’d end up with something that was always a little bit more homogenous.
So, when you’re touring do you find yourself coming up with new ideas as those influences present themselves to you? If so, how do you document that? How do you then take those ideas and come back to them when it’s studio time?
We’re never disciplined enough to sit down and be like, “We’re gonna get this done”, or “We’re going to think of these particular ideas.” But, with ‘O Monolith’ in particular, we were actually on tour in the US when we realised that we needed to hunker down and get the woodwind and choral arrangements written because we hadn’t done it yet. I think we kept putting it off because we were quite busy doing tours and stuff, but it was a nice environment to be doing these arrangements in. [The States is] so culturally at odds with most places we’d been beforehand, which was the middle of Wiltshire in the winter. It was nice for us to talk about this somewhat pastoral sonic world that we wanted to conjure through the additional arrangement. I think we were doing a long drive from Montreal to Washington DC, and we were thinking about old English folk music, and we felt a million miles from home, but I think it helped make all the extra parts feel somewhat nostalgic.
““It’s that sense of not having masses of time that sometimes makes your music feel quite urgent””
Do you have any preference as to where you’re writing?
You just get such different outcomes and I think the key is changing it up quite a lot. We used to write – when all of us were still working and writing music and needing to find that balance – in this small studio in Croydon, that we chose because it’s halfway between Brighton and London. Some of the best music that we’ve ever written was made when we were going to Rock Bottom, which was the name of the studio… because we’d have two or three hours, and then everyone would have to either go back to Brighton or work in the morning. It’s that sense of not having masses of time that sometimes makes your music feel quite urgent. However, I think that the meandering ability to start wandering through experimentation is the privilege of being able to have an idea disseminated and take time to grow.
You can see the change and growth between the two records. It sounds like a lot of that probably stemmed from having the time to reflect and deal with that burnout, from what you're saying….
Yeah, I think so, and also just having more time not playing shows to distance yourself from a scene that everyone is insisting that you’re a part of, because you’re not sure whether you are or not.
Image: Lucy Evans
What do you mean by that? Do you not feel as if you’re fitting into a box that you’ve maybe been placed in?
Well, we consider ourselves our own project, and maybe there are similarities that people draw between us and other bands and artists and things. But from not having played shows throughout those 18 months of Covid, you start to question whether or not this is stylistically or musically the direction that we feel like we’re being pulled towards. We didn’t want to go back and make a second album where the musical pretext is just that we explore the same thing that works, or what people seem to be into, both with our music and other bands’ music, just because it’s got a scenic cohesion to it. We were just interested in maybe challenging that, and that challenge came from us as much as other people.
I think a lot of people these days are very quick to shoehorn something as post-punk, and it is very much this ingrained culture – is that something that you feel like you’re potentially moving away from?
I think everyone that’s been likened to this particular scene has moved away in their own direction, in really interesting ways, since I suppose the year that we were all mostly interlocked in terms of playing on the same festival bills. So many bands have made an initial statement that has gotten people really excited about what they do, and I suppose reacted against that. We just wanted to question whether or not that’s a sector or single formula that we can keep exploring, and it’s always furthered by interesting twists and turns. I’m really interested to see as time goes on who will go back to their original style. Maybe no one will.
““I was texting Arthur that the synth on ‘Peel Street’ sounds really good. We’re always moving ahead, but we’re not afraid of backtracking””
Yeah, it could be an act of rebellion. You know, you get categorised sonically, but then you move away from that. Have you moved away from it willingly, or were you encouraged to change because you didn't want to be put into that box?
I think that’s 100% the case. I think we as a band go back occasionally and look at things that we’ve done. I was thinking about a version that we could do of one of the tracks on ‘Bright Green Field’, and I ended up listening to a couple of the tracks that I hadn’t listened to in well over a year. I was texting Arthur that the synth on ‘Peel Street’ sounds really good. We’re always moving ahead, but we’re not afraid of backtracking at some stages to the bits that excited us musically, but nothing can ever be the same twice. Everyone changes, and I think the one thing that never really goes back unless something goes wrong is everyone’s musicality, musicianship and ability to listen. That’s always moving forward. So unless something goes wrong, that should hopefully continue to improve.
Image: Lucy Evans
It’s important to look back, as much as it is to look forward. That being said, whenever I've been to a squid gig there’s always someone in the crowd shouting “Houseplants!”. How do you feel about playing that song and what’s with the resistance to put it back on the setlist?
You know, I was thinking about maybe whether we should get a neon backdrop that scrolls by with text saying “People shouting Houseplants will be escorted out of the building.” It’s always there, and I don’t think it ever really gets us down to the point that we finish a gig and we’re like “fuck sake.” But it is always a bit odd to me… if you are so desperate for this one song, why would you go to a gig where they’re gonna be playing loads of other stuff? It usually seems to be me and Anton that catch each other’s eye, and he has such an incredible eye roll once people start shouting it. I think I have shouted “fuck off” once, and then felt really bad about it. I think Anton usually just mutters under his breath as if to say “Don’t you start.” I’m sure in the future, we’ll play that song again
““I immediately bought a couple thinking that in the future, when I’m old, I can say I bought a record that has one of the first AI performances on it””
When you’re not too busy arranging setlists… what is it that you find yourself listening to at the moment?
So there are two records that I’ve been obsessing over during this European tour that we’ve just been on. And the first one is ‘Everyone’s Crushed’ by Water From Your Eyes, they’re a group from New York. I saw them play at Green Man. There's also a record called ‘The Head Hurts, But The Heart Knows The Truth’, which is a producer under the pseudonym of Headache. It’s quite nostalgic. It’s hilarious and also heart-wrenchingly sad in moments, but the voice is performed by AI. When I found that out, I asked, “Does that make me hate it, or love it more?” It’s all written by a poet who I looked up online. It was available for a limited run of vinyl pressings, so I immediately bought a couple thinking that in the future, when I’m old, I can say I bought a record that has one of the first AI performances on it.
I suppose there’s a big controversy surrounding that, whether or not AI has a creative licence. But from the way you’re describing it, it feels reminiscent of ‘Endtroducing..…’ by DJ Shadow, with that being the first of its kind by using only samples. It’s crazy that there are still new ways to pioneer in music...
I’m glad you made that reference because I’m getting a similar kind of energy from the Headache record. There’s so much emotion, and it definitely feels like a natural successor to that.
Main Image: Lucy Evans
