Brighton post-punk titans kick off O Monolith tour in Austin with openers Water From Your Eyes
Brighton post-punk quintet Squid kicked off their O Monolith tour in Austin with a sold-out show at Parish on February 2nd. Joining them was New York art-rock duo Water From Your Eyes.
Vocalist Rachel Brown and guitarist Nate Amos of Water From Your Eyes started off the night with their noisy, distorted rock overlaid with deadpan lyrics. Along with a drummer and second guitarist, a highlight from their set was the song “Barley” from their 2023 album Everyone’s Crushed. Brown danced between singing the chorus, which happened maybe one or two other times during the night. Other times, she delivered lyrics with one hand on her ear and the other with the mic.
Squid opened up their set with “Swing (In a Dream)” as they do on O Monolith, followed by the last song on their album. They then treated us to their latest single “Fugue (Bin Song),” introduced as a “new-old” song which they’ve played live for many years. Perhaps a nod to a Baroque fugue, the song’s layered arrangements and lyrics are chilling and intensify as the song goes on.
The set included a few songs from their debut Bright Green Field such as “Paddling” and “Documentary Filmmaker.” During “GSK,” a few Squid-hat wearing guys started crowd-surfing as they did a few other times during the night. Squid played other favorites including the 7-minute 33-second-long “The Cleaner,” as well as “Narrator,” which they hadn’t performed in a couple years. Though they didn’t encore, they didn’t they need to; a Squid show is Herculean in performance. We could have easily seen the show twice, just to catch a new angle of their multi-instrumental cacophony – cowbells, gongs, triangles and all – and to hear the long, winding songs again.
You can scroll through below for all the highlights from a fantastic night.
All Photos by Alexandra Howard
Squid
Water From Your Eyes
