Squid – Bright Green Field review

If you’re of the belief that not very much of anything makes sense any more, then the art of the song by extension has to go with it. All the traditional structures in which it’s lived since the days of Bill Haley and The Beatles are now in this world nil and void, expressions of conformity that serve no place in the post-civilisation civilisation the human is making a home in.

Bright Green Field isn’t quite as far out as to be unrecognisable, but it’s still a record in a similar guise to recent works by black midi or Black Country, New Road in being experimental and uncompromising. A five piece who met at University in Brighton, Squid have garnered some impressive streaming numbers with a string of EPs, but their starting point – or points – are different here, the overarching themes of innocents at the mercy of rampant capitalism and the avalanche of reactionary dogma recurring nightmarishly through crackling, abstract shapes.

This may sound as lacking compromise but in Narrator, Paddling and Pamphlets there is an almost epic sweep to their always propulsive, sometimes ingeniously abrasive scope. At other times meaning is harder to locate, but what can you expect if nothing, but nothing, makes sense any more.

You can read the full review here.