Cowards (album)

Cowards is the third studio album by the English post-punk band Squid. It was released by Warp Records on 7 February 2025, and was met with widespread acclaim by music critics.

Cowards was recorded after the completion but before the release of the band's second album, O Monolith, with recording finishing on June 9, 2023.^[1] It was inspired by traveling to different countries and reading books about the countries to create what lead singer and drummer Ollie Judge described as a "book of dark fairy tales."^[2] Some of these books included Agustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh and Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup.^[2]

The lyrics touch on a variety of topics within the overall topic of "evil itself," with "Crispy Skin" being about cannibalism and "Blood on the Boulders" about the Manson murders.^[3]

Cowards has been described as both post-rock^[4] and art rock,^[5] with influences from a diverse set of other genres, including electronica, folk music, and psych rock.^[6] The album was seen as a continuation of the band's distancing from their earlier post-punk sound.^[4] Writing for The Quietus, Cal Cashin described Cowards as "A Pet Sounds, except all of the pets are scorpions, and tarantulas, and maybe some stick insects too".^[4]

Cowards was released by Warp Records on 7 February 2025.^[15] It follows Squid's 2023 album O Monolith.^[14]

According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Cowards received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 from 17 critic scores.^[17] In a review for Paste, Alli Dempsey wrote that "Sonically, Cowards might be Squid’s most actualized and in-depth venture yet."^[14] Writing for Under the Radar, Nick Roseblade felt that Cowards was "the strongest album Squid has released to date".^[18]

• Louis Borlase – guitar, bass guitar, vocals
• Ollie Judge – drums, lead vocals
• Arthur Leadbetter – keyboards
• Laurie Nankivell – bass guitar, brass, percussion
• Anton Pearson – guitar, bass, vocals, percussion

• Ruisi Quartet – strings (tracks 1–6, 8, 9)
  • Alessandro Ruisi – violin
  • Venetia Jollands – violin
  • Luba Tunnicliffe – viola
  • Max Ruisi – cello
• Zands Duggan – additional percussion (tracks 1–3, 5–9)
• Rosa Brook – additional voices (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
• Tony Njoku – additional voices (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9)
• Clarissa Connelly – additional voices (track 9)
• Chris Dowding – flugelhorn (tracks 7, 9)

• Marta Salogni – production, recording, additional engineering
• Grace Banks – engineering, additional production
• Dan Carey – additional production
• Heba Kadry – mastering
• John McEntire – mixing
• Chiara Ferracuti – additional engineering

• Ben Sifel – design
• Tonje Tielsen – photography