Interview: In conversation with Squid…
Squid return to Margate as part of their new tour…
English art-rock quintet 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.
Whether any of these characters were inspired by their residency at Margate gig venue Where Else? is not for us to know. But for the Sussex-based group, their frequent sojourns to Thanet have certainly got some ink spurting from Squid’s creative tentacles - namely lead singer and drummer Ollie Judge, guitarists Louis Borlase and Anton Pearson, bassist Laurie Nankivell and keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter.
Not that you could ever accuse Squid of being boring; in fact, they almost go out of their way to make things more challenging for themselves. After the successes of acclaimed debut record Bright Green Field, which reached the top of the indie charts in 2021, the difficult, Covid-hampered second album only served to build on the band’s reputation as a monstrous source of originality and imagination.
This, their third album, explores textures of folk, kosmische, psychedelia, jazz and electronics, with additional voices and instruments including Danish experimental songsmith Clarissa Connelly, composer Rosa Brook from punk group Pozi, percussion wizard Zands Duggan and the Ruisi Quartet for violin, viola and cello.
The range of sound allowed Squid to write “arrangements that build into crescendo before sheer-drops into discrete melody”. With them heading back to the Kent coast for a gig at The Lido in Margate on March 1st, 2025. as part of a UK tour, we spoke to Arthur Leadbetter and Anton Pearson in the middle of trying to figure out how to bring this album to the live setting.
C: Is releasing the record the bit you look forward to the most?
AL: Well, we’re always many steps ahead of the public’s perception of where we are. Like, when the second album was coming out, we were deep in recording the third album. Now that the third album is being released, I’m here in my room trying to build a percussion instrument for the tour and deep in the process of practising for the live show. So it’s always the next thing that we’re kind of getting our heads wrapped around. The release is something we’ve been waiting for, for a little while. It’s going to be so nice to just let it into the wild and go play the tunes on stage.
C: With the themes of the characters in the songs, would you call it a concept album?
AP: It depends how you define a concept album, but I think usually we write all the music first. So, Ollie who writes the lyrics, if he gets two or three songs that feel like they’ve got a bit of a thread, then he uses that as a kind of springboard to build the other things. It wasn’t like we sat down and started writing an album about morality, or characters. Our process is just like, get in a room, write music together, continue with bits we find interesting until we’ve built whole pieces of music and then we put some lyrics onto it. But it’s still important for us to have a thread - maybe that just makes it feel like a cohesive album rather than a concept album.
C: The structure of your songs is so unique, is it difficult to transfer it from the studio to the stage?
AL: It definitely presents its own challenge, for sure, but it’s something that I just absolutely love trying to do. How can I play keyboards with one hand and hit 12 Indonesian bamboo instruments in time with the other. It’s just so exciting and I just feel so grateful that I have to spend my days trying to resolve it.
C: With you guys including so many different instruments during your live show, does that mean you stay quite tight as a band?
AP: No, we have forgotten things because it’s quite a while since we recorded these tunes - there is definitely some relearning. But we’re pretty busy as a band because we kind of have to be, so we always stay in sync with each other musically in some way. [For this] we’ve also had to learn bits of each other’s parts as well, just because we haven’t always got all the same featured musicians on stage that we have as on the record.
C: Are you guys a band who watches streaming platform stats after release?
AL: I like to think we’re not thinking about streams at all when we’re writing music. We’re pleased when our streams are doing well, but it’s not the end goal. The end goal is that we get to keep having a career together and able to write whatever music we feel like writing. We’re lucky we haven’t had any creativity compromised at any point in our career.
AP: I used to really watch figures, YouTube plays or whatever, and really get a bit of a buzz off it. But I’m so glad to say I don’t anymore. It’s dangerous because it’s both meaningless and it means so much, because it’s your income, and if we did get millions of views we’d probably get some more cash, which would mean we’d make more art. It does mean something, but when you start to follow it and you start to watch it you start to equate your own personal worth with other people’s appreciation of your art - and it’s such a slippery slope.
C: Is it right that a large chunk of this album was written in Margate during a residency Where Else?
AP: Yeah, we’ve spent a lot of time in Margate. Really early in the writing process of this album, we did a week of writing at Prah and then we performed unfinished or just-started songs at Where Else? to quite a nice, packed room. It was a really important part of the process.
C: You’re heading back to play The Lido this time - where will you stay while you’re down there?
AL: Well, we’re going to have a tour bus for the first time. So, if we wanted to, we could just sleep on the bus, wake up in the morning and go for a little dip in the sea, which would be lovely - pretty chilly in March, though. We love playing in Margate and had an amazing gig there a couple of years ago at Cliftonville Hall. It was banging. Such a lovely crowd came out and it was really beautiful.
C: So a tour bus this time… what is the usual hangout when on tour - the burger joint or the nearest craft beer bar?
AL: We’re very well behaved on tour, it must be said. If it’s summer and we’re in the countryside, we like to find a swimming spot, go to a river and go for a little swim. That doesn’t happen very often but can be a highlight.
AP: We do go bowling when we’re on tour - that’s a good thing to do because it’s fun and doesn’t require too much brain or body power.
AL: Hey! Tell that to the bowling champions!
AP: Yeah. No offence to any professional bowlers out there.
AL: If there’s a spot we all love in a particular city, we’ll make sure that we return there every time we go, like the pie pub in Sheffield, The Broadfield.
AP: We had really good pizza when we were in Margate last time around the corner from Where Else? that does New York pizza by the slice.
C: Palms?
AL: Palms! Yeah, that was really good.
