UK post punk band Squid have announced a brand new album, O Monolith, which is the follow up to their stellar 2021 debut, Bright Green Field.
The band shares that they began working on the new album while on tour almost immediately after the release of their debut: “Without that tour we wouldn’t have any of these tracks,” says singer/drummer Ollie Judge. He further elaborated that the fully seated, mid-pandemic early-return-to-live-music shows enabled the band to experiment more with the songs, saying: “People were so looking forward to seeing live music that we thought we could just play anything, even if it was unfinished. In some form or another we played about 80% of O Monolith, mostly without lyrics.”
Judge also shares that the lyrics for first single, “Swing (In A Dream)” were inspired by a dream he had about the painting The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. He says “In my dream, I was in the painting but it was flooded and everything was floating away.” Synths and horns abound throughout with the guitars taking a grittier and heavier feel to bolster the instruments in the upper registers.
Squid in 2022 (photos by Kevin McGann)
Check out our live coverage from their Music Hall of Williamsburg show in March 2022.
O Monolith was recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, and was produced by the band’s longtime collaborator Dan Carey and mixed by John McEntire (Tortoise). It will release in full on 6/9 via Warp Records.
Listen to “Swing (In a Dream)” and check out the album art and tracklist below.
Squid O Monolith
Swing (In A Dream)
Devil’s Den
Siphon Song
Undergrowth
The Blades
After The Flash
Green Light
If You Had Seen The Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away