Squid – Fugue (Bin Song) Review

With fading eyesight and the perils of trying to heat up an old home, the backdrop to your day is dictated by the music firing through your noise-cancelling headphones. If you cannot hear the wind blowing through the cracks in your single-glazed windows, then you cannot feel the cold. That is fact. Listen in to Fugue (Bin Song) for as long as you can keep your bagged eyes open, then. Nobody should have expected anything this great after the resounding work Squid provided on O Monolith. Usually, bands and artists are keen to relax after the hectic rush of a release schedule, but the pressures of the real world are forever mounting, and we must consume more. Get in the bin. Fish out this song. Enjoy the instrumental charms, the excess of creation spills another cup of quality.  

Make sense of the clues you continue to sniff out. Squid turn to their instrumental efforts, and look for comfort and quality before leaping off into the deep end of lyrical defiance. Fugue (Bin Song) is reminiscent of the thought process behind Yard Act leaving The Trenchcoat Museum off their record, Where’s My Utopia?. It snarls and swipes at the world around it but does not fit the rest of the creative push found on the full release. In turn, it leaves Squid with an absolute essential which, thanks to the ever-present dream of streaming, will stick around. Celestial horrors and the heavy feet which carry us to new horizons, Squid provides a shell-shocked approach to their latest work, this feeling they gave all they could on their second record. It paid off, of course, but at what cost? 

Did Squid lose their identity as Fugue implies? There is a feeling of figuring out the future on this – a monumental release which appears to be a reset, a change of course or action from the band whose O Monolith effort was astounding. And as proud as they are of it – there is a lingering sense they are disappointed or alienated by what they may feel themselves becoming. It takes a bolder artist than most to dissect this living, breathing release and Fugue (Bin Song) does it well. At a time when all people know they can hold to is their identity, it becomes harder to see the light of change. Fugue (Bin Song) does very well to reconnect with their roots, the band has moved on from them but has not forgotten its past and scrappy beginnings.  

So it comes to this, and Squid finds themselves not reminiscent but cornered. They do not lash out as most would expect, as some other bands this year have done in their consistent dream of seeking relevancy, but in understanding why the changes were made. Put your guard up, and carry on. Delay the inevitable soul-searching a bit longer and bury it deep under slick guitar work which, for those with the benefit of two working ears not riddled with tinnitus, will sound great. Slick mixing and a constant urgency, an energy which sparks an adrenalin rush to kick against the shoehorned compartmentalisation of their music, Squid reaches out to their listener in a rabid, career-high form as they question where their work will go, and where it has already taken them.