★★★★☆
Squid rejuvenate a mishmashed post-punk scene with their sophomore album, O Monolith, writes Lucy Harbron.Post-punk is a boring phrase now. It means nothing, no one really knows the history, very few people really care. In 2023, the label has come to mean something doom-filed, grungy, dark, loud, maybe with some spoken word or a singer that can’t carry a tune. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a massive fan of the genre – but there’s something about Squid that is different. The first single of the new album era, ‘Swing (Inside A Dream)’, shrugs off any dreariness associated with the movement, and bounds into raging, building intensity. With a vocal that seems to hark back to The Replacement’s ‘Swingin Party’ – a track that a lot of the much-of-the-same post-punk crowd would likely reference – Squid’s Ollie Judge borrows the swagger and ditches any hint of boredom. In the first track of their second album, O Monolith, you already know the band are going to keep you on your toes. Whether it’s all-out guitar and trumpet chaos, silly vocal fluctuations, a la Red Hot Chilli Peppers, video game details, or dark lyrical depths, no one could ever describe Squid as samey – from the first moment of this album to the last.
Thematically, the album is just as hard to pin down. The album’s message is as mysterious as monoliths themselves – landing as a grand, sturdy whole. Despite beginning undeniably left-field and experimental, even for the band’s grandios standards, O Monolith is as dominating as its namesake.
With every experimentation, whether it be a new vocal effect or the decision to write a game score, Squid seem more than sure of themselves. It doesn’t feel like confidence, it feels more solid than that – like a giant stone needle that we can all only stand round and gasp at.
If I had to take a guess at what the band are getting at, I’d loosely say they’re picking holes in our stubborn society; especially when it comes to clear standout track ‘Undergrowth’, with its themes of environmentalism, mortality and the current unshifting sense of societal peril creeping in.
If post-punk has always been boringly interested in a faint sense of dread, Squid are focused on all-out doom. In places, notably on ‘Siphon Song’ and the marching intro to ‘After The Flash’, O Monolith could easily be soundtracking a horror film. Regularly stepping out of the musically intense and into the unsettling, there’s genuinely something a little scary about O Monolith as the band write a soundtrack to the uncanny.
Photo: Alex Kurunis
