8

Thursday, May 20, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

It feels like the name Squid 

has been circulating around the 
music blogosphere for half a 
decade at this point. The band has 
maintained an almost elusive aura, 
only sparking further intrigue 
with every subsequent single and 
EP released. What’s more, the 
music they were trickling out to 
the public evaded any surefire 
categorization, to a point where 
critics and enthusiasts alike have 
piled them with other oddball 
U.K. groups as something they 
call “New Weird Britain” — 
which is just a fancy way of saying 
“unclassifiable guitar music from 
across the pond.” Although, if 
we’re to take this niche seriously, 
the associated bands are certainly 
making a statement this year with 
shame and Black Country, New 
Road already releasing critically 
hailed projects. However, if there 
is any record that people were 
expecting from this supposed 
subgenre, it is Squid’s debut. 

Bright Green Field follows 

the pattern of the music Squid 
has been teasing up until now, 

which is that it doesn’t really 
follow any pattern at all. Without 
a doubt, there will be people 
who simply call it art rock and 
move on, but that would be a 
strong generalization of what 
the band manages to construct. 
Bright Green Field is an album 
so dedicated to the concept of 
“no idea is a bad idea” that it 

fully commits itself to throw 
everything at the wall. Naturally, 
this is quite a risky endeavor, and 
for the less prepared, this surely 
would have been an unmitigated 

mess. Fortunately, it would seem 
the last five years have properly 
conditioned Squid. Bright Green 
Field 
successfully 
avoids 
the 

pitfalls of such a process and 
amounts to one of the most 
unique rock albums this year, and 
on their first go no less.

Of course, Squid’s inspirations 

come through clearly — Talking 

Heads and Pere Ubu are two 
that come to mind — but it’s the 
instability of how these influences 
are combined and transfigured 
that demonstrates the group’s 

originality. 
For 
example, 
the 

track “Boy Racers” starts with a 
groove and adds layers of guitar 
riffs into something both upbeat 
and off-kilter. Much like some of 
the other lengthy tracks on the 
album, it builds pace and alters 
itself several times, but then gives 
out abruptly halfway through 
into something that can only be 
described as if Throbbing Gristle 
decided to take up vaporwave. 
It’s unbelievably bold, totally 
irrational and expertly executed. 
Another track that follows this 
mold is “2010,” with its complex 
guitar 
patterns 
— 
sounding 

straight out of In Rainbows-era 
Radiohead — that switch to all-
out thrash metal on a dime. It’s 
one of the best songs on the album, 
acting as a perfect centerpiece to 
the chaos.

Lyrically 
speaking, 
Squid 

likes to keep things compact and 
esoteric. It’s a bit of a nebulous 
effort to try and decipher some 
larger 
connected 
meaning. 

However, an overarching theme 
of 
corporate 
mundanity 
and 

its stale purposelessness does 
pop up across the album. The 
track “Narrator” describes the 
desire to dictate one’s direction 

in society, with vocalist Oliver 
Judge chanting out to the world 
“I’ll play my part” as if expecting 
some universal reply. The song 
“G.S.K.” is a direct reference to 
the 
pharmaceutical 
company 

GlaxoSmithKline and goes on to 
create devastating imagery about 
a “Concrete Island.” This strange 
duality between the bombastic 
fun of the music and the crushing 
core of the lyrics contributes a 
certain mood to the album as 
if someone took a happy face 
and stapled the smile in place. 
Perhaps the Bright Green Field 
they are referring to is actually 
astroturf.

When 
it 
was 
announced 

that 
Squid 
was 
signing 
to 

legendary electronic label Warp, 
it only added to the immense 
anticipation that the band had 
already accrued. Warp has built 
a reputation for signing non-
electronic groups just as they 
make their big breakout into the 
musical landscape; they did it 
for Grizzly Bear, Danny Brown, 
Battles, 
Stereolab, 
Broadcast, 

Yves Tumor and countless others. 
With Bright Green Field, Squid is 
staking their claim as a member 
of this list.

The anomaly of “17776: What football will look like in the future” 

Our time will come to an end. But 

what if it doesn’t? What would you do? 
Would you quit your job and travel the 
world? Take a nap? “17776,” a hypertext 
speculative fiction narrative by Jon 
Bois, proposes a different answer on 
behalf of humanity: play football. As 
a deeply conditional football “fan,” 
this piece has to be my favorite thing 
I’ve ever read (and truly, I believe that 
“17776” should be experienced with 
little prior knowledge).

Published online in 2017 at SB 

Nation, a sports-focused media outlet 
owned by Vox, “17776” is a deeply odd 
and oddly deep fictional narrative 
that questions how the scarcity of 
time affects existence. Set 15,755 
years in the future, Bois creates a 
world where birth, death and the 
suffering in between ended on April 7, 
2026. People live free of financial and 
health concerns; instead, in the United 
States, many focus their energy on an 
ongoing nationwide football game, 

where participants play or engage 
in fanfare. The story is narrated by 
three sentient space probes, who 
jokingly converse about the state of the 
universe while observing the game.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever 

read. First, the format: a mixture 
of monthly calendars, group chat 
records, 
historical 
documents, 

podcast transcripts and Google Maps 
of a landscape different from our own. 
“17776” is a narrative that pushes 
the boundaries of fiction, especially 
on the internet: it’s one of the most 
well-known additions to the internet 
genre of hyperliterature, in which 
online fiction uses unconventional, 
expressive forms to convey its 
“function.”

While 
newly-awakened 
space 

probe Nine’s (Pioneer 9) group chat 
messages are formal, insistent and 
laden with question marks (most 
commonly “What?” followed by 
questions like “We don’t do anything, 
right?” and “This is the end, right? The 
end of this story?”), Ten’s (Pioneer 
10) and Juice’s (Jupiter Icy Moons 
Explorer) texts are much more casual, 

with less grammar and more jokes, 
like this one about Lunchables: “neatly 
partitioned meats and cheeses appeal 
to me on an aesthetic level ok mfer.” 
Ten and Juice are deeply familiar with 
the state of the universe and have no 
sense of time or urgency — they don’t 
ask questions or bother with most 
things, really. Compared with Nine’s 
insistent questioning and existential 
dread, they seem uninterested in 
“serious” questions of the world 
around them. Juice would much 
rather discuss football, like many of 
the humans on earth.

The lack of “productivity” infuriates 

Nine, from the late 20th century, who 
begins angrily texting messages such 
as “I’m appalled… disgusted, I guess,” 
overcome with the lack of “purpose.” 
Ten and Juice then slowly and calmly 
text back, explaining to Nine that 
“wasting” time is simply impossible — 
time has ceased to be a finite resource, 
and life goes on forever. In “17776,” 
human beings are no longer under the 
jurisdiction of the natural world. But 
for creatures who’ve learned to define 
their existence with constraints such 

as time, money and physical ability, 
immortality 
is 
terrifying. 
Since, 

instead of uncertainty or stress, 
“boredom is their only enemy,” so 
humanity turns to sports to deal with 
being alive.

The sheer amount of thought put 

into “17776” is impressive. With plenty 
of newspaper clippings, historical facts 
and believable vignettes, the intricate 
worldbuilding makes the piece feel 
like an irreverent, entertaining study 
of history. Looking at historical 
documents such as certificates and 
newspaper clippings makes me feel 
like I’m trying to answer a Data-Based 
Question for my high school American 
history class again (in a good way, this 
time). The montages of documents 
over a course of 15,000 years have 
a way of making you feel incredibly 
inconsequential in their magnitude. 
Most of the “historical” vignettes 
narrated by the space probes’ group 
chat gave me genuine goosebumps, 
as I absorbed the stories in which 
people grapple with the pain of an 
endless existence. The tales weave in 
and out of the football game, making 

the 
unnatural 
seem 
profoundly 

mundane, and the every day seem 
truly otherworldly — an always-
burning light bulb is sacred, and New 
York City has all but disappeared into 
an underwater ghost town.

Additionally, “17776” remains the 

only true “utopian” piece of literature 
I’ve ever read; absent of suffering, 
it’s impressive that the piece so 
thoroughly captures attention without 
the traditional ideas of “conflict.” 
Instead, it draws readers in through 
thorough worldbuilding, crafting a 
reality wholly different but strangely 
similar to our own. Ultimately, within 
the story, many Americans turn to 
football to pass the time, like we 
always have. Many, including Nine, 
could easily call playing football a 
waste of time. But, in our world and 
theirs, humans’ need for sports goes 
beyond expectations of productivity 
and profit; Bois shows us that to unite 
in this fashion and bring uncertainty 
and excitement to a life filled with 
mundanity is anything but useless. 

 MEERA KUMAR

Daily Arts Writer

Squid becomes its own narrator on ‘Bright Green Field’

DREW GADBOIS

Daily Arts Writer

Courtesy of Julian Wray

Read more at michigandaily.com

