It’s not a very scientific formula, but you could argue that people choose their band’s name based on what they want to convey.
The modern ratio of, for instance, your Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s to your Life’s, Feet’s et cetera would seem to back this up, at least in a post age of truth thing.
By this token, Squid could be a three-chord punk outfit from Grimsby, but instead they’re a quintet who met at university in Brighton and make various noises which remind you that the phrase ‘post rock’ now covers something so amorphously huge as to be without meaning. With a starting point nominally in jazz, their smorgasbord runs an ellipsis between Neu and Miles Davis and all points in between.
Sharing a label with the provocative black midi, 2018’s frantically charged debut release Houseplants implied that they also have a shared commitment to listener baiting, but the four tracks which make up this EP demonstrate far more control and a flair for conveying mood.
Lots of bands, in the privacy of their own notions, probably think they sound a bit like Talking Heads. On The Cleaner, Squid sound a bit like Talking Heads. The great news is that the bit they nail is the essence of what made the New Yorkers so ground breaking, capturing the bone-dry, epically taut funk which boiled everything down fierce angles and a refusal to compromise. By extension, it touches greatness.
Orbiting that are tunes like Match Bet, about a Sonic Youth obsessed customer of a shop singer Ollie Judge used to work in – like everything in the Squid multiverse, it begins as one thing (not too out of the ordinary indie pop) and finishes as something different (trumpet laden psychedelia). Moribund instrumental opener Savage isn’t the slash-and-burn white noise epic its title promises, while Rodeo has the blunted, hallucinogenic charm which makes the Beta Band’s early work so prized.
Asked recently about what their own personal brand of superfans should be called, the deadpan response was ‘Squidiots’. It’s the word of a group who either totally understand themselves or have barely met. But definitely one that demands you listen and take the risks they’re taking.
