I’ll always remember being 20 years old and listening to Modest Mouse’s “The Lonesome Crowded West” album for the first time.
It’s one of those memories that feels like a movie for how perfect it was.
Because there was no better age to listen to that album than that — right at the cusp between childhood and everything else.
Because there’s no other age where you can so genuinely listen to the ballad of “Cowboy Dan.”
He goes to the desert,
fires his rifle in the sky
And says, “God, if I have to die,
you will have to die.”
It was an album that, sitting in the office of the Cardinal Points newspaper late at night on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus, made my head feel like it was racing down an empty highway before slamming the brakes at 80 miles an hour.
The album I chose to review this month — “Cowards” by the band Squid — is far from that experience. But it’s still an experience.
It’s been a while in this column since I’d grabbed a random album from the list to give a listen to, and that’s how I came across “Cowards” this week. Who can resist an album cover with a scorpion tail on it after all?
Squid are an English-based alternative punk band formed in 2016 that count British acts Neu! and This Heat among their influences.
But the music they end up making on this album is firmly planted in that distinctly quirky ‘90s chat-rock sound.
Unfortunately, as that decade proved, it’s incredibly easy to fall into a parody of that style and “Cowards” doesn’t quite break the mold here.
The album sees some truly lush harmonics as on the opening track “Crispy Skin” where the skittering, jangly keyboards slowly mesh with the sharp guitars and gorgeously deep basslines.
Then the instruments fall out as lead singer Ollie Judge laments:
“All those words
That I read
Do nothing
How I think.”
You really have to be in a very particular mindset to take in lyrics like that.
And you have to be a very careful songwriter not to come off sounding like a guy waving his hands around in the back of a pot smoke-filled Volkswagen bus.
There’s a reason bands like Modest Mouse break out from the pack after all. They’re just that good.
As I mentioned though, what does really stand out about “Cowards” is the instrumentation.
The airy waves of guitar sounds crashing on the track “Building 650” bring to mind a Built to Spill track, and the fuzzy, rubbery bounce of “Showtime!” sounds like a lost Pavement b-side.
And the vocals are solid throughout but, again, you have to be fully prepared to try not to cringe when lines like these are sung earnestly on one of the album’s weakest tracks, “Cro-Magnon Man.”
“Predator and prey, alive
The numbers never multiply
The petrol station sign
“Open every hour, all through the night”.
In the end, you’re left with the impression that Squid is probably some young Brit’s favorite band and for good reason. They’d be a fun enough summer afternoon drive sort of listen.
But you just hope somebody hands that young Brit a Modest Mouse record sometime.
I give “Cowards” 3 stars out of 5.
Have you listened to “Cowards”? What did you think? Email Ben Rowe at browe@pressrepublican.com with your thoughts and takeaways.