Squid – “Pamphlets”

Holly Whitaker

Squid – “Pamphlets”

Holly Whitaker

For the past several months, the UK art-rock group Squid have been gearing up to release their debut album Bright Green Field. Back in January we heard “Narrator,” which featured Martha Skye Murphy, and the band followed that with “Paddling.” (Both songs ranked amongst our favorites in their respective weeks.) The album finally arrives next week, and before then Squid are offering up one more song.

The song in question is “Pamphlets,” Bright Green Field‘s epic closer and a fan favorite from back when bands could still play live. “It’s about all the rubbish right-wing propaganda you get through your front door,” Ollie Judge said in a statement. “It imagines a person with that as their only source of news being taken over by these pamphlets.”

While “Pamphlets” might mull over fraught real world tensions the same as many other songs on Bright Green Field, it offers a bit more catharsis than the album’s further-out experimental moments. “Pamphlets” is one of those Squid songs that stretches out over eight minutes and makes every moment count, building and releasing a couple times over. It’s a noisy, groovy, infectious song that represents Squid at the peak of their powers, and you can hear it below.

Bright Green Field is out 5/7 via Warp. Pre-order it here.

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