Music Editor Oliver Scoggins reviews Squid’s excellent performance at Birmingham Town Hall
Stepping into Birmingham Town Hall to see Squid is probably one of the coolest gig experiences you can get
Stepping into Birmingham Town Hall to see Squid is probably one of the coolest gig experiences you can get in Birmingham – amongst the other venues in the City Centre, the Town Hall surely stands out as the most unique. The use of Roman architecture techniques signalled a revival of the style in the UK, and it is certainly impressive. It seems the perfect place for Squid to play; the sheer scale of some of their compositions and the mythology of their most recent effort, O Monolith, matches perfectly with the ancient grandeur and natural reverb of the venue.
The gig was kicked off by Blue Bendy, a South London post-punk band who were well chosen to support Squid; the songs they played are not a far cry from the music of other bands in the current UK post-punk scene, but that’s not to say they were at all boring. Far from it – their half-an-hour-ish of material was captivating, and a great warm-up for the main event. The crowd were clearly enjoying it – the frontman Arthur Nolan commented a few times on his nerves and seemed somewhat anxious about the show, but the audience all cheered him on, and the majority were grooving along to the songs. As a relatively small band, a gig in such a grandiose venue as the Town Hall has got to be terrifying, and Blue Bendy did a great job of navigating this.
Every single band member looked incredibly into the individual parts they were playing
Squid arrived on stage promptly at 9:15pm and were met with thunderous applause. They kicked things off with the mysterious ‘Swing (In A Dream)’, the lead single from O Monolith. It seemed an announcement of this era of Squid as a band: this is what they are all about now. It moved into ‘If You Had Seen the Bull’s Swimming Attempts You Would Have Stayed Away’ (try saying that’s your favourite song in a conversation), and then ‘Undergrowth’, all coming across well live. The band then went back to fan favourite ‘G.S.K.’, a really great song on its own, but elevated to a whole different level in person. Right from these opening few songs, it was very clear Squid love playing live: every single band member looked incredibly into the individual parts they were playing. As an audience member, it can be difficult to get into gigs of even your favourite artists if they appear as if they would rather be elsewhere, but Squid had the opposite effect – the tracks really came to life as a result, and the enjoyment obvious in the band quickly infected the audience.
After a cello improvisation by Arthur (accompanied by the expected electronic noise and guitar feedback), the band moved into ‘Narrator’, probably the first really mosh-encouraging song. What started as a small pocket of friends in the front centre of the crowd soon turned into a raging sea of bodies, all screaming along with the repeated ‘I’ll play mine” at the climax of the song. Just from listening to the studio version of ‘Narrator’, one can imagine the unstoppable urge to move that it would create in a live setting, and that urge was met with a very eager audience.
After the chaos Laurie delivered an otherworldly solo performance on the trumpet, heavily contrasting the energy of the moments just before – it was the perfect cooldown and transition to the lower-tempo ‘After The Flash’ and unreleased ‘Glass’. The organisation of the setlist was smart throughout, leading to many natural sounding transitions between tunes that really lifted the live set to another level. The band allowed moments of chaos, and then moved the audience back down for cuts that were (relatively) calmer. These transitions were surprisingly potent between songs from Squid’s debut effort Bright Green Field; the albums were made to complement each other extremely well.
Shouts of ‘Warm in the summer’ and ‘Snowy in February’ from Ollie were echoed back almost deafeningly by the crowd
Just before the finale of the show came ‘Documentary Filmmaker’, a slower selection with a central moment of tension. Whilst on the album recording this moment is huge, in the live setting it seemed to explode, helped by the anticipation of the audience for another chance to really go for it. The shouts of ‘Warm in the summer’ and ‘Snowy in February’ from Ollie were echoed back almost deafeningly by the crowd; the energy that the band managed to maintain despite playing these more laidback cuts was impressive.
It appeared that almost the whole crowd were engulfed in the circle pit that formed and crashed together
This eventually gave way to the wonderful one-two-punch of ‘Pamphlets’ and ‘The Blades’ to end the show. As soon as recognisable elements of ‘Pamphlets’ appeared in the interlude preceding it the crowd gave huge cheers; it is one of the band’s strongest compositions, and clearly another huge hit with die-hard Squid fans. The mosh pits for the climax were even bigger than those during ‘Narrator’ – it appeared that almost the whole crowd were engulfed in the circle pit that formed and crashed together as the final screams of ‘Pamphlets through my door and pamphlets on my floor’ came along. As the song wrapped up, the signature rhythm of the song continued on, and helped the transition into ‘The Blades’. It is wildly impressive how well the two songs seemed to fit together – two vastly different songs from two distinct releases seemed instead as if they were two parts of the same whole. Again, the climactic moments of the song were met eagerly by the audience, but more importantly the slower final 2 minutes were respected with silence. Ollie commented as the band left the stage how well the audience respected the songs, thanking us for being ‘loud for the loud parts and quiet for the quiet parts’.
Overall, Squid did a great job of translating their catalogue to a live setting and managed to fully captivate a huge audience in such a magnificent venue. To me, they fully affirmed themselves as one of the most musically interesting and exciting bands in the UK rock scene at the moment. Squid are a creative force to be reckoned with, and if the opportunity to experience them live ever arises, you should certainly grab onto it with both hands.
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