Squid

Event information

Squid's new album "Cowards" is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong.

Singer and drummer Ollie Judge explains that he used to notice "real life things that I saw on the street. People I knew and people that I'd met" but somewhere between their last album and today, this lived social commentary gave way to an imagined world that felt more real. An avid reader, Judge was drawn more and more to the cult fiction section of book shops, falling into "bleak books about horrid murderers" such as 'Lapvona' by Ottessa Moshfegh, or 'In The Miso Soup' by Ryū Murakami.

The smokescreen of digital narcissism is present here, as Judge adds "a lot of the album deals with the idea of sleepwalking into a world of complacency".