Squid release new single and announce new album ‘O Monolith’
Dynamic Brighton post-punks Squid have returned with their most expansive single yet, ‘Swing (In a Dream)’. Not finished there, the band has also announced the much anticipated second album, O Monolith, which will be released on June 9th via Warp.
The new single is a customarily wonky number. It’s comprised of syncopated rhythms, gritty guitars, and electronic textures, with some jazz-inspired brass thrown in for good measure. One of the group’s catchiest cuts, there is lot is going on, but the band pull it together well, instantly immersing the listener.
A personal favourite is the breakdown at the end of the track, a wonderfully off-kilter moment where the guitars and bass punch heavily. Underpinning this hypnotic climax, a brief, almost motorik beat brings the track together with the chime of the cymbals and the thickness of the kick drum. ‘Swing (In a Dream)’, has set an exciting precedent for the new album, with fans hoping that the group deliver on the expansion they’ve laid out.
Of the new single, vocalist and drummer Ollie Judge said: “This was inspired by a dream I had about a painting called The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. In my dream I was in the painting but it was flooded and everything was floating away.”
Accompanying the single, a surreal Where’s Wally-style video also arrives, starring friends and family of Squid. Video director Yoonha Park said: “I was interested in exploring visual ideas from Where’s Waldo, Richard Scarry and Brueghel as a means to express anxieties about the climate crisis.”
Squid started working on O Monolith only two weeks after the release of their debut album Bright Green Field in May 2021, while the band were on tour in a world still getting to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Without that tour we wouldn’t have any of these tracks,” Judge recalled, explaining that the fully seated, socially-distanced shows allowed them to test the music, which was then a work in progress. “People were so looking forward to seeing live music that we thought we could just play anything, even if it was unfinished. In some form or another we played about 80% of O Monolith, mostly without lyrics.”
O Monolith was produced by the band’s long-time collaborator, Dan Carey, and mixed by John McEntire of post-rock heroes Tortoise.
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