New Release of the Week: Squid - Cowards

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.

The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producers Marta Salogni and Grace Banks.

On additional production is long-time collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums.

The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York.

Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton. Their debut album ‘Bright Green Field’ (2021) broke into the top five in the UK chart.

In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding ‘O Monolith’, which took the band all over the world.

Sound Pick: Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory - Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory

From the off, Sharon Van Etten and The Attachment Theory is sonically different from Van Etten’s previous work.

Writing and recording in total collaboration with her band for the first time, Van Etten finds the freedom that comes by letting go.

The result of that liberation is an exhilarating new dimension of sound and song-writing. The themes are timeless, classic Sharon – life and living, love and being loved – but the sounds are new, wholly realised and sharp as glass.

Reflecting on this new artistic frame of mind, Van Etten muses, ‘sometimes it's exciting, sometimes it's scary, sometimes you feel stuck.

‘It's like every day feels a little different – just being at peace with whatever you're feeling and whoever you are and how you relate to people in that moment.’