Album: Bright Green Field
Artist: Squid
Label: Warp
Released: May 7, 2021
The past few years have seen the release of a variety of post-punk releases ranging in both sounds and influences. This year was especially packed, with releases from bands like Black Country, New Road, and Shame it’s safe to say that a revival of some sort is on the horizon if not here already. Squid’s debut album “Bright Green Field” is definitely a stand out among these numerous albums and has already become one of my favorite albums of the year so far. The mix of noisy energetic tracks and interesting
The album starts off with a brief ambient opener and leaps into G.S.K, an incredibly catchy song and a definite stand out among the tracklist. With a mix of interesting synth lines blended in with trumpets and vocalist Ollie Judge’s unhinged vocals sounding reminiscent of The Jesus Lizard’s David Yow, his vocal delivery throughout the song is assertive and powerful. The track leads into a really beautiful section with a trumpet, synths, and some underlying vocals that give the song an entirely new feeling until finally leading back to the main hook of the song for a quick send off. The next track is Narrator featuring Martha Skye Murphy, this one showcases what almost sounds like Talking Head influences sparse instrumentation and yelpy vocals. The back end of the song takes a different turn and turns into near chaos with both Ollie and Martha wailing over a barrage of noise and energy from the rest of the band. Boy Racers takes a slight break from the chaos of the previous track but proves to be equally as intense due to it’s very interesting instrumentation and song structure. Starting off with some angular sounding lines from the guitars the first half of the track is a solid track and could stand alone by itself but the second half is especially interesting in that it sees the band experiment with some more ambient ideas while heavily incorporating the synth and vocal effects on top. Paddling is the band’s go at a krautrock song, the band has cited Neu! as an influence and it definitely shows on this track. The motorik rhythm, the use of electronics, and the build up to the chorus of the track all blend great and is a nice change of mood from the previous tracks. Documentary filmmaker is one of the more unique tracks off the album to me in the way in which both the song is structured as well as the instrumentation used. It starts off with the sound of synths and trumpets until piece by piece more instruments continue to be added. The track slowly creeps and builds intensity before reaching the climax of the track and then settles down and finally fades into silence. 2010 is another interesting track. The mellow approach towards the beginning with jangly guitars and softly spoken vocals all give off a mood not seen in the album as of yet. The middle of the track sees the band attempting to subvert the listener’s expectations by throwing in a few seconds of full mayhem until returning to the melancholy mood from before. Peel St. shows the band at their most intense point thus far, much like Paddling this track wears it’s krautrock influences on it’s sleeves and commits fully for at least the first third of the song. The rest of the track sounds completely different and is equally as enjoyable. Global Groove has some really great sounding interplay between both guitars, and embraces some more of the brass sounds found sparsely in earlier tracks. Pamphlets is an incredibly strong closer and has the band let completely loose for one final song, a stand out track for sure.
This album was a really nice surprise for this year, Squid is definitely a band to look out for and I’m looking forward to any future releases by them. You can listen to the album below
https://open.spotify.com/album/4z44Wir05QzQYSCs0KwsKX?si=W_M6bALXRvyTPvxQhqEFqQ
