Squid

Vicar Street, Dublin

25th October 2023

Special Guest Blue Bendy & M(h)aol

On the back of the release of their critically acclaimed second album O Monolith, and following a raucous festival set at Beyond The Pale last weekend, Squid announce that they will return to Ireland later this year for shows in Belfast and Dublin. 

The UK five piece known for testing limits and breaking rules (read the profile on the band in The New Yorker here) will play Mandela Hall, Belfast on Tuesday 24th October 2023 and Vicar Street, Dublin on Wednesday 25th October 2023. 

Squid’s latest album O Monolith was released on Friday 9th June and has garnered worldwide praise, with NME commenting “If Squid can make daring, experimental music sound as fun as this, then they will take some stopping” in their 9/10 review and The Times urging readers to give the band their attention, writing their latest album is “ fascinating, rewarding of persistence and totally worth losing yourself in.”

Teeming with melodic epiphanies and layered sounds, Squid’s second album O Monolith is a musical evocation of environment, domesticity and self-made folklore. Like its predecessor, 2021’s critically acclaimed, UK number 4 album Bright Green Field, it is dense and tricksy – but also more warm and characterful, with a meandering, questioning nature. 

Expansive, evocative and hugely varied, O Monolith retains Squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit, but it still holds surprises for those familiar with Bright Green Field. It’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. “Every record we do is a snapshot of where we’re at,” drummer Ollie Judge says. “We’re quite a musically stubborn band, and in an endearing way it’s a stubborn record. It requires quite a lot of attentive listening.” Like its namesake, O Monolith is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.