Squid have announced their next album, Cowards, which will be out February 7 via Warp Records. The follow-up to 2023’s O Monolith is led by the single ‘Crispy Skin’, which arrives with a video directed by Takashi Ito. Check it out below.
“‘Crispy Skin’ was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel Tender Is The Flesh I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets,” lead vocalist/drummer Ollie Judge said in a statement. “I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult.”
Judge added, “If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”
The music video serves as an adaptation of Ito’s award-winning experimental 1995 short film Zone. Ito offered the following description: “A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images.”
Cowards features contributions from Danish experimental songwriter Clarissa Connelly, composer, pianist, and singer Tony Njoku, Rosa Brook of Pozi, percussionist Zands Duggan, and the Ruisi Quarte. Marta Salogni, Grace Banks, and Dan Carey helped produce the LP, which was mixed by Tortoise drummer John McEntire and mastered by Heba Kadry.
Cowards Cover Artwork:
Cowards Tracklist:
1. Crispy Skin
2. Building 650
3. Blood on the Boulders
4. Fieldworks I
5. Fieldworks II
6. Cro-Magnon Man
7. Cowards
8. Showtime!
9. Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)
