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