Photo credit: Holly Whitaker
Squid follow up the incredible ‘Narrator’ with ‘Paddling’, the second single to be taken from forthcoming debut album ‘Bright Green Field’. The record, produced by Dan Carey, will be released on 7 May via Warp Records while the new song – already a live favorite (if you can remember shows?) is: ‘Written from two different perspectives, ‘Paddling’ is a song about the dichotomy between simple pleasures and decadent consumerism. Recounting a familiar scene from Wind in the Willows, the song reminds us that although we are humans, we are ultimately animals that are driven by both modern and primal instincts, leading to vanity and machismo around us in the everyday.’
Openning in sedate fashion with electronic glitches, loops and beats that gradually build up the tempo, the song finds the band trying to make sense of that time in early adult life when friends suddenly decide to focus solely on their careers and forget about having fun: ‘Just do what you’re told’. The band share the lead vocals to capture their unsettled attitude with the lines ‘There are people, there are people inside… And they’re changing in shape and in size… Where you going? I don’t want to go there’ being delivered in breezy indie-pop style. The rest of the sound dynamically crosses from prog-infused moments to melodic pop and math rock that sounds somewhat like a collaboration between Times New Viking and These New Puritans. The song draws to a close with an abstract, faltering climax, complete with urgent and increasingly assertive yells of ‘Don’t push me in’.
