After generating a thoroughly-deserved buzz for their phenomenal live shows,
Squid are now showing that they can capture their cephalopodic charm on record too with recent banger ‘
Houseplants' riding high on everyone's playlists. With an exciting summer lined up, including new music, festival appearances and their first ever tour, it was high time Dork caught up with drummer and lead vocalist Ollie Judge as he did his household chores. The glamorous life of a rock and roll star!
Morning Ollie, how's it going?
Morning! I've just finished hanging up my washing, so all is good. Well, it's been mental really - ‘Houseplants' is still on the A-List at 6 Music, which is far beyond any of our expectations. Crazy!
Any top tips on keeping houseplants alive?
Speak to them, but don't ever look at them.
Fair enough. So tell us about your new EP which you have coming out this summer?
We have an EP coming out this summer! Some of the mixes just came through; I was literally just listening to them. It sounds wicked.
Can you tell us what it's called?
We haven't decided yet. All of the songs are about jobs, so me and Louis want to call it ‘Careering', but that's just a working title. Or ‘Careers Deluxe' maybe, it hasn't been decided yet.
Which career would you be the worst at?
A stand-up comedian, I'd be awful at that.
Best stick to the music then, Ollie. Can we expect more from the same post-punk vein that you've been delighting us with so far?
Yeah. There are two tracks, ‘Matchbet' and ‘
The Cleaner' which feel like a follow on from ‘
The Dial' and ‘Houseplants'. And then there are two other tracks which are really weird and out there; one is just an instrumental ambient talk-y kind of jazz track. And there's ‘Like A Rodeo', which is just a drum machine and quite like Spiritualized, very spacey. I'm just looking forward to getting out something a bit wackier. Not one song ever sounds like the one before it, but I think that makes it fun.
Sounds cool. What was it like working with Dan Carey again? He's been smashing it with the likes of Fontaines D.C. recently.
God yeah, he's got his fingers in everything at the moment. It's great. He kind of feels like the sixth member now, he's done pretty much everything with us. He's great to work with, no frills. He's a nice guy as well which always helps.
How did you meet him?
I emailed him when I was bored at work one day. I was watching an interview with Lottie from Goat Girl, and she was talking about Dan. So I Googled him because she said he was really into krautrock and stuff, and then found out about Speedy Wunderground and it sounded like exactly the right thing to be doing.
