Slow Secrets

Squid “Narrator”

“Narrator” starts with a premise like “what if LCD Soundsystem were about 40% more unhinged?” and quite frankly that would be more than enough to satisfy me. A crisp tight-pocket groove, a herky-jerky post-punk feel, and a weird shouting nerd? It rarely fails. But as it goes along – and at a little over 8 minutes it really does go along – the song reveals itself to something more in unexpected digressions. There’s a moody arpeggiated guitar sequence with vaguely unsettling spoken vocals by Martha Skye Murphy that feels like the song going sideways into a lateral progression, and then later a part with spiking staccato noise that’s more like passing through a sudden storm. The last chunk of the song cruises out, zooming on beyond cartharsis into some more nebulous sort of resolution.

Buy it from Bandcamp.