It pleased me to hear about this new Squid release – I managed to catch them last year at the Hope & Ruin where they supported the much-missed Red Deer People. This track is an outlier for a new ep, Town Centre due out on 6th September on the Speedy Wunderground label that premiers via thefader.com
The track shows the strength of the band’s musicality as it shapeshifts, leads you down one path, makes you stop, look around, and go off on another path.
Speaking to fader.com about the track, the band describe The Cleaner as a lost acquaintance.
“It’s one that we’ve spent the last year trying to get to know,” they explain. “Tirelessly working and turning up whenever needed. We work for the money to spend our time doing other things. The Cleaner imagines the divided work and play structure and thinks about breaking from it.”
Jagged guitar lines intersperse with sparse percussion and jittery, geek indie. Things change down a gear into a more meditative vibe, then go back up again. The vocalist manages to channel both Mark E. Smith (The Fall) and James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem). If you picked apart all the shimmer and surface of 1980s pop and retooled it with left-field Indie influences such as The Fall and Talking Heads you get an approximation of what Squid and The Cleaner are. A contemporary artist who dabbles in similar waters is Pixx.
All bodes well for the ep in September. A lost acquaintance to the band is one you should meet ASAP.
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