Squid are back with a new album. Cowards, the follow-up to their second album, O Monolith, arrives February 7, 2025, via Warp. It comes with a video for “Crispy Skin,” from Takashi Ito, adapted from his 1995 short film Zone. Check that out below.
Contributors to the LP include Clarissa Connelly, Tony Njoku, Pozi’s Rosa Brook, percussionist Zands Duggan, and the Ruisi Quartet. Marta Salogni and Grace Banks produced the LP alongside the band and Dan Carey. Before heading out on a European tour behind the record—find those dates below—the band plays a sold-out New York show tonight.
“Crispy Skin,” Ollie Judge said in a press release, “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.” He added, “If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”
Ito called 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.”
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Cowards:
01 Crispy Skin
02 Building 650
03 Blood on the Boulders
04 Fieldworks I
05 Fieldworks II
06 Cro-Magnon Man
07 Cowards
08 Showtime!
09 Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence)
Squid:
11-12 New York, NY – Drom
02-17 Liverpool, England – Invisible Wind Factory
02-18 Manchester, England – O2 Ritz Manchester
02-19 Glasgow, Scotland – Old Fruitmarket
02-21 Newcastle, England – NSU Domain
02-22 Sheffield, England – Leadmill
02-24 Cambridge, England – Junction 1
02-25 Norwich, England – The Adrian Flux Waterfront
02-27 Oxford, England – O2 Academy Oxford
02-28 Southampton, England – Engine Rooms
03-01 Margate, England – Lido
03-02 Brighton, England – Chalk
03-04 Birmingham, England – XOYO Birmingham
03-05 Bristol, England – Bristol Beacon
04-09 Paris, France – Cabaret Sauvage
04-10 Cologne, Germany – Club Volta
04-11 Dresden, Germany – Polimagie Festival
04-12 Berlin, Germany – Lido
04-14 Schorndorf, Germany – Manufaktur
04-15 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg
04-16 Antwerp, Belgium – Trix
04-18 Rotterdam, Netherlands – Motel Mozaique Festival
04-19 Nijmegen, Netherlands – Doornroosje
04-26 London, England – Roundhouse
