The Friday Dispatch
Squid, Independent Venue Week, Amanda Petrusich and Rose Gray
Squid are coming out of hiding
It’s cheap to say that listeners should expect the unexpected from Squid. Just as their second album O MONOLITH saw a transition in story and style compared to debut, Bright Green Field – with the former embracing the political punk of it all, while the latter shifting to root itself in folklore as a means to express similar societal frustrations – this year’s Cowards - released on 7 February via Warp - also sees a kind of transformation for the Brighton band.
“It would have been easier for us to basically write another album similar to O MONOLITH,” guitarist Louis Borlase says of the experience writing their the reocord. “I think we were keen to write in a way that’s a bit more exposing, so there are thinner textures and instruments that were untreated a lot more. We finally got there in terms of confidence and believing that we can write in that way, because it is really exposing and really hard. There’s fewer places to hide on this record.”
A series of dark fairytales, Cowards delves into the murky world of human corruption – each song from the perspective of a different evil. When asked why, vocalist and drummer Ollie Judge laughs: “I’d like to think that I’m not an evil person,” he says, “so writing in the shoes of people who are so far removed from how I live my life is quite an interesting thing to do.”
Just as collaboration breathed new life into the album, Cowards takes a breath of its own, with characteristic complexity that here is more about space than speed. Settled down are the frenetic time signatures that once demanded calculation and precision, replaced instead with a more traditional approach. “There isn’t any track where I have to perform with a calculator at the same time,” jokes Judge, while assuring that their “mathematically spicy” songs are still present. “It’s quite reactionary to the last record,” he continues. “I think we wanted things to be a little bit more straightforward than the last record. It’s kind of strangely experimental for us.”
Out this week is The Weeknd;’s Hurry Up Tomorrow, Maribou State’s refined Hallucinating Love; DITZ’s confronting Never Exhale; a 20-year reissue of Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks; and MIKE’s Showbiz!. Also out now is Anna B. Savage’s You & i are Earth, and Bells Larsen announced his new record, Blurring Time, with single “514-415.”
The enduring spirit of live music is in the hands of our venues
With some of the most iconic venues celebrating milestones, and new and exciting places for bands to play springing up, there's a lot to celebrate as a fan of live music during this year's Independent Venue Week (IVW).
Taking place across 214 venues up and down the UK since Monday – from the teeny 14-capacity Grayston Unity in Halifax to London’s 3,100-capacity Troxy – IVW has seen hundreds of gigs spanning every corner of the genre spectrum.
Alongside comedy nights, ‘in conversation’ talks and documentary screenings, for the first time venues are also being encouraged to host open-mic events: a direct nod to the importance of these independently-run spaces in giving artists their first shot at performing on stage. For Sybil Bell, IVW’s CEO and founder, it’s not just about providing these inaugural opportunities for the people in front of the mic, either: “It’s also important to think about the talent pipeline of people who want to work in the industry behind the scenes: sound and lighting engineers, tour managers, front of house staff and road crew, they all start out in these spaces,” Bell tells us. “If you don’t know anyone in the industry, how do you get a foot in the door? At an independent venue, you can start to build up your own ecosystem and that’s true for so many people who are now leading companies and thriving. These venues are a talent pipeline for the industry as a whole and it’s so important that we recognise that.”
Many of the places celebrating significant milestones this year are a testament to the community at the heart of IVW. London’s Strongroom Bar will be raising a glass to their fortieth year while Bedford Esquires turns 35. Also entering the IVW family are five newly-opened venues: Soul Mama in Stratford (run by jazz saxophonist and IVW artist ambassador Yolanda Brown), LVLS in Hackney Wick, KOLA in Portsmouth, Papillon in Southampton and The Rat & Pigeon in Manchester. “Hackney Wick has a long creative history - from warehouse parties to street art, it’s truly an amazingly creative area that just seemed to be lacking a great music venue for full band shows,” explains LVLS’ Izaak Rushton. “The hope is to build a versatile space that will attract slightly more established touring acts and allow newer acts to get some great support slots. We’ve also made the bar spaces appealing in the hope that we can attract more locals in and encourage them to check out new music taking place in the basement venue.”
Amanda Petrusich on “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges
I’m obsessed with The Stooges. It’s amazing. The absolute and utter lawlessness of this record is so moving and extraordinary to me. It makes me feel like I just stuck my finger in a light socket. It’s just three chords, and it’s John Cale of The Velvet Underground just plunking out that one piano line over and over again. It’s like being in an insane asylum. I’m a pretty think-y person, but this song is just unadulterated, visceral feeling. It’s urgent and it’s awesome, and sometimes I need to manually lock into that. This song does that for me.
Also, Iggy Pop, although he is a very famous and highly regarded artist, I nonetheless think he is a visionary and genius and misunderstood and underestimated. I just think he’s one of our greatest living artists.
The first profile I ever wrote for The New Yorker was Iggy Pop. I flew down to Miami, and we spent like three or four days together driving around in his Rolls Royce Phantom, which is still the nicest car I’ve ever been in. We were, you know, swimming around in Biscayne Bay, and I don’t get star struck too often, but it was certainly a moment where I was just bobbing around in the water and I looked over and it was Iggy fucking Pop! My soul left body. I would say he was shirtless maybe 75% of the time we spent together. He’s incredibly funny and very kind, but he’s also a very serious person who thinks deeply about the world and his art.
I’d never written a profile of that length before, and I was very nervous about getting it right. If I can be pretentious about this for a moment, I feel like the best profiles almost feel like a kind of classical portraiture. You really want to capture some sort of true and ineffable thing about a person – who they are, what it feels like to be around them. Of course, your loyalty is always going to be to your readers, but I think you also want the subject to recognize themselves in the piece. It’s not coal mining, but it is very hard work to get the story of someone’s life right. Iggy made it really easy. He’s just really open and smart.
Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three books
The introduction…
Pop’s new “it girl”, London-born Rose Gray wants us to get louder, please and after the release of her debut album, we have no choice but to oblige.
Describe your sound… Underground wonky pop with a hint of etherial anthemic beats.
How you started making music… I had surgery on my ankle when I was 15, it forced me to stop playing sports and dive deeper into music. I played my little Cassio piano and started writing awful songs haha. And the rest in history!
The secret to an addictive pop hit… Smart lyrics and simple melody, or smart melodies and simple lyrics.
Best club night you’ve been to… Adonis. Hands down. The music, the crowd, the energy. It’s just got everything.
Favourite memory from recording Louder, Please… Writing the chorus to 'Angel Of Satisfaction' and screaming for five minutes when we played it out in the room.
Louder, Please is out now
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community on two iconic records — one from the past, another from the present. This week, Reviews Editor Steven Loftin gets excited about Alan Lomax’s legendary Southern Journey Volume 1: Voices of the American South, and Lambrini Girls’ 2025 debut Who Let The Dogs Out.
There’s something about getting older that makes you appreciate the past more. While I’m in my early thirties, and theres still plenty of field left to run, but when you dive into historical elements of the world, it does tend to put things into perspective. After reading folk singer Shirley Collins’ autobiography (America Over The Water) of her time with archivist and musicologist Alan Lomax in 50s deep south America, including the period where he recorded Voices Of The American South, and after listening through, I was immediately drawn to the moment in times captured throughout. The centuries that evolved and developed to the point the their “modern” participants were able to convey a wealth of personal and societal culture in minute cuts. From the religious to the racial, and the chain gangs along the roads, it was the timelessness that hit me the most in these sparse but full-bodied recordings. A greatest hits of 30 TikToks of the “Apple” dance for a generation in the next 50 years probably wont hit the same, but who knows!
Debut albums should make an entrance. They’re the opening gambit that sets your intentions straight, and going by Lambrini Girls’ Who Let The Dogs Out, we don’t stand a chance. Breakneck punk that embodies the raw anger and frustration with a world that just doesn’t want to do better, the duo of guitarist and vocalist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira are rightly pissed off – which to a degree, feels like an understatement. The sounds are melodically cacophonous, a feral energy that runs unrelenting while slamming societies pitfalls from the patriarchy to the beating heart of ACAB, at just shy of 30 minutes, they manage to slam their fists into a whole heap of topics. Importantly, they do so with a bloody-teeth bearing smirk, embodied by scathing quips and some cracking song titles to boot (see: “Cuntology 101”). Essential listening for today’s mixed up, muddled up, fucked up world.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists – 20 new tracks, top-loaded from the last five days in music and on repeat in the Best Fit office right now.
Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Glare, Memory of Speke, Yuno, Mia June, Fust, and coverstar Celeste Madden.
“I don’t have TikTok and I don’t really understand it.”