Here’s a stupid question: How do the members of Squid, the British post-punk crew, feel about the popular television program Squid Game? Maybe it’s not a Geese/Goose situation. Maybe there’s no overlap at all. Maybe it helps get the band’s name out there. Maybe it completely fucks their SEO results, especially when the second Squid Game season drops shortly before the third Squid album. I honestly have no idea.

In any case, there’s a new Squid album incoming. Cowards arrives next month, and we’ve already posted lead single “Crispy Skin.” Today, they’ve followed that song with the twinkling, slashing new track “Building 650.” It sounds a lot like a latter-day Sonic Youth song until the strings arrive, and then I don’t know what it sounds like. Here’s what Ollie Judge says about it:

“Building 650” is a song inspired by our first ever trip to Japan. We played the Summersonic festival in 2022. Luckily, we were booked to play two days after the COVID travel ban had been lifted. Because of this, we felt like some of the only tourists in Tokyo. On the plane, I read In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murikami and watched Lost In Translation out of excitement and later decided to write lyrics about being an outsider visiting Japan, including a very particular type of loneliness one can feel visiting a country that is so different from their own. This loneliness feels exaggerated in Tokyo. On the surface, itʼs hectic and full of people, but when you listen itʼs eerily quiet.

Longtime Squid collaborator Felix Green co-directed the “Building 650” video with Japanese filmmakers Daisuke Hasegawa and Kuya Tatsujo. Check it out below.

Cowards is out 2/7 on Warp Records.