My first answer was the Montreal outfit Ought, but I was doing it wrong. They sound like the talking heads—or at least they did on 2014’s More Than Any Other Day (especially on “Habit,” which I had heard on XPN and literally thought was David Byrne covering some new-to-me Velvet Underground track.)
My final, imperfect answer, was St. Vincent, at least prior to her getting swallowed up by the entire Annie Clark cult of personality. (Is this hot take helped or hurt by the fact that she did a duet album with David Byrne himself? Did I win?)
Okay so cut to this week. I’m not saying Squid is the Talking Heads of 2022. What I'm saying is that they sound as though Devo and Television f*cked at a Talking Heads concert and had a baby. When music can be simultaneously irreverent and reluctantly danceable, you’ve got the makings for a re-listen cycle that could push your Spotify year-end wrap-up into a state of concern for your friends and loved ones.
Covid was an introspective time for everyone. Quarantine turned us all into overthinking Prince Hamlets with nobody to actually murder except everybody on the television news. (And the graveside skull was our illusions of simplicity. Metaphor over.)
Then, if you caught Covid, which I did despite a level of general compliance that I’ve never shown in any other domain of my entire existence—you got even more to think about.
If you caught long Covid—which I did—you had neurological and mental health issues on top of whatever general malaise accompanies an otherwise healthy mind watching the real-time denouement of civilization.
I told virtually everyone I knew about the neurological symptoms and literally nobody about the psychological ones. (Although one night, as my head was swirling under the horrors of how I imagine post-concussion syndrome to feel, I let it slip to Krissy that I was suddenly under attack by my thoughts. They felt, for the first time in my life, separate from “me.” My thoughts were beginning to mutiny, and that revolt took the form of recalling too many memories at once. Struggling to articulate, I said, “I’m feeling like I have too many memories.” She gave me a kind smile and said, “Of course, you’re a tortured poet!”
(It was an amazing answer, full of wry Irish wit. Unfortunately in that moment I was suffering from undiagnosed brain trauma so I just bit down on a pillowcase and tried desperately not to feel any sensations. If you've ever had an "edibles emergency," long covid felt like the kind of bad trip that keeps sensitive types away from hard hallucinogenics. (I’m convinced a similar feeling is the reason Virginia Woolf took her own life.)
Cut to last week and I was listening to “Narrator” by Squid. The intensely weird singer was wailing about “losing my flow, and my memories are so unnatural” and I thought back to ten months prior when I had been driving to work with a layer of brain fog so thick that I would panic every few minutes to find myself driving a car as if out of the blue. I would walk into my office and ask myself, “Wait, why am in this location?” Then I would remind myself words have meaning, and say, “This is a building. I work here.”
So there I was still going to work, still playing my part. Not feeling like myself, but agreeing to play my part. I’ll play my, I’ll play my, I’ll play my, I’ll play mine…
“Narrator,” sounds like a perfect Frankenstein’s monster. Four-on-the-floor drums giving way to jangly post-punk guitars and jaunty picked bass notes accompanying intentionally overblown scream-speaking and almost-comedic synth flourishes made to sound like Danny Elfman air-humping Prince with a keytar.
To me, this music was inexplicable. Vague comparisons could be made to The Stickmen and the 80s no-wave movement. But the sheer turbulence of this music—punctuated by shimmering ornamental guitar phrases ushered in as though from another song (probably a Chon track)—was safely thrilling. I say “safely,” because men who’ve experienced neuro-inflammation (and women in general) need safety as the bedrock emotion upon which more exciting feelings can be enjoyed. (Covid taught me a lot about the invisible privileges of being a cis white male. Better late than never.)
So what exactly was SO goddman safe about this monstrosity of an art-punk track? Almost nothing. It certainly wasn't the emergence and then re-emergence of mysterious female (Skye Murphy's) vocals speaking over the maelstrom. I figured it out: It was the moment giving way to repetition.
“I’ll play my… I’ll play my… I’ll play my… I’ll play my…”
Then things get interesting. The first “my” starts going down-then-up. The second, third and fourth "my" go up-then-down. (Landing, I believe, on the perfect fifth of the root note.)
Was this… melody? Was... catchiness materializing? Was the madness of the song giving way to consonance? Well, not entirely, because the backing vocals were getting crazier, now screeching banshees below the soulful and suddenly meaningful "I'll play my...".
Something in repeating, “I’ll play my… I’ll play my…” It told my brain that even though things will continue to get crazier around me, I can take comfort in repetition. Repetition would be the foundation of a necessary illusions. Repetition will fuel the myth that we’re being pulled forward by destiny, rather than being spat out onto the edge of existence by the disappearing past. Repetition will support the falsehood that individuals and societies can enjoy true resolution of the tensions between chaos and order. And repetition will provide the most calming illusion of all. Simplicity.
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Dave Shay was a staff writer at Pop Matters for one week until the editors realized he had nothing profound to say about Law & Order BBC other than “Solicitors still wear powdered wigs: I’ll allow it.”
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