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Nov 13, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Harrison Fishman

British experimental post-punk five-piece Squid have announced a new album, Cowards, and shared its lead single, album opener “Crispy Skin,” via a music video. They have also announced some tour dates. Cowards is due out February 7, 2025 via Warp. Takashi Ito directed the “Crispy Skin” video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates.

Cowards is Squid’s third album and the follow-up to 2023’s O Monolith and 2001’s debut album, Bright Green Field. Squid features Louis Borlase, Ollie Judge, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, and Anton Pearson.

Cowards was recorded at Church Studios in Crouch End, London with Mercury prize winning producer Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. Longtime collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums, provided additional production. John McEntire (of Tortoise) mixed the album and Heba Kadry mastered it.

Judge had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘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. 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. If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”

Takashi Ito, whose video for the song is an adaptation of his award-winning experimental 1995 short film Zone, had this to say about the video: “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.”

Of the new album, Borlase says: “We were thinking of an album of great songwriting. Simple ideas that resonate in a very different way to O Monolith, which was dense and complex.”

Judge adds: “Touring fed into this record in a way that I didn’t initially realize. Every song has a specific place anchored to it, places that all five of us have visited together, like New York, Tokyo, and Eastern Europe.”

In January, 2024 Squid shared a new song, “Fugue (Bin Song),” which was recorded during the O Monolith sessions.

Read our 2021 interview with Squid.

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)

Squid Tour Dates:

Mon. Feb. 17 - Liverpool, UK @ Invisible Wind Factory
Tue. Feb. 18 - Manchester, UK @ O2 Ritz Manchester
Wed. Feb. 19 - Glasgow, UK @ Old Fruitmarket
Fri. Feb. 21 - Newcastle, UK @ NSU Domain
Sat. Feb. 22 - Sheffield, UK @ Leadmill
Mon. Feb 24 - Cambridge, UK @ Junction 1
Tue. Feb 25 - Norwich, UK @ The Adrian Flux Waterfront
Thu. Feb. 27 - Oxford, UK @ O2 Academy Oxford
Fri. Feb. 28 - Southampton, UK @ Engine Rooms
Sat. March 1 - Margate, UK @ Lido
Sun. March 2 - Brighton, UK @ Chalk
Tue. March 4 - Birmingham, UK @ XOYO
Wed. March 5 - Bristol, UK @ Bristol Beacon
Wed. April 9 - Paris, FR @ Cabaret Sauvage
Thu. April 10 - Cologne, DE @ Club Volta
Fri. April 11 - Dresden, DE @ Polimagie Festival
Sat. April 12 - Berlin, DE @ Lido
Mon. April 14 - Schorndorf, DE @ Manufaktur
Tue. April 15 - Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
Wed. April 16 - Antwerp, BE @ Trix
Fri. April 18 - Rotterdam, NL @ Motel Mozaique Festival
Sat. April 19 - Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje
Sat. April 26 - London, UK @ Roundhouse

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