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Brighton post-punks get weirder, wilder and more exploratory with age, finds Cal Cashin. A real revitalising moment for British guitar music, this trio of spookily young groups combined virtuous musicality with a diverse and incongruous canon of influences to make some of the most exciting and experimental rock music seen on these shores for generations.
Helmed by singing drummer Ollie Judge, Squid were among the most explosive live prospects in the country, and the group quickly accumulated a devoted following for their eternal, yearning space jams that crash-landed somewhere between the in-vogue post-punk of their contemporaries and the very best cosmic rock of 70s Canterbury and Cologne.
However, whilst these early moments earmarked Squid as a truly exhilarating rock band, possibly the absolute best rock band to flirt with the current UK mainstream, their recent trajectory has not been so straightforward. Whilst Bright Green Field did offer respite from the righteous maelstrom with some short jazzy segues, the follow up O Monolith was an altogether more textural affair that saw Squid consciously try to become something more.
Cowards is very much a post-rock album, but the deliberate and meditative first wave post-rock of Talk Talk, Disco Inferno and Bark Psychosis, as their trademark kosmische skronk fades in and out of consciousness, competing for space with sweltering string arrangements and a range of modular synth apparitions. Elsewhere, the post-rock manifestations can be found all over the record.
