The Squid song inspired by Edgar Allan Poe
In the nearly 200-year span since his death in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe has continued to resonate across multiple different forms of media. With his signature gothic and haunted style of writing, Poe is the go-to inspiration whenever a mysterious spirit or a spooky state of mind is required. Everything from The Twilight Zone to SpongeBob SquarePants has taken elements from Poe’s work, and British experimental rockers Squid also fit into that lineage.
While the band’s 2021 debut Bright Green Field pushed the post-punk revival to its most jagged and fragmented edge, 2023’s O Monolith left more room for beauty and poetry. Still, darkness could be lurking around every corner, even as the band got more personal than they had ever been in the past. No song better represents that delicate balance than ‘The Blades’.
“It’s a lot more vulnerable than stuff we’ve previously done, which can be quite a daunting thing,” winger Ollie Judge remarked about the song. “Dan [Carey] and I were talking about vocal delivery and how it would be good to not completely let myself go, and not fall back on shouting because it’s more instantly gratifying. The end of the song is really soft and tender and I don’t think we’ve done something like that before.”
While the band were more focused on modern political and social issues when composing ‘The Blades’, Poe’s influence did eventually bleed into the final product. But just to illustrate the extent of Poe’s influence across the years, Judge wasn’t making a direct connection to one of Poe’s most famous works. Instead, he got the message second-hand thanks to the most famous cartoon of all time.
“On the surface it’s a song about police brutality with the last section kind of inspired by The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, although I’ve never read the book, I’ve just seen The Simpsons’ spoof of it,” Judge admitted. “Narratively it follows a police helicopter pilot’s day, ending with him in bed hearing another pilot circling the skies as if he were taunting him. There’s a deeper meaning in there somewhere of my fear of ego, but I’m still working out which bit of the song that’s coming from.”
The Simpsons referenced The Tell-Tale Heart during the show’s first season with the series’ eighth epidose ‘The Tell-Tale Head’. Later iterations of the shows’ ‘Treehouse of Horror’ anthology take inspiration from a number of different Poe tales, but The Tell-Tale Heart has yet to see an official full-length adaptation from the residents of Springfield.
Check out ‘The Blades’ down below.
