Squidgenini: SQUID | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Squidgenini has, for some time, been a rising force in soulful, r’n’b sounds coming out of Brisbane/Meanjin. Actually, it’s more than just soul and r’n’b. To listen to her debut EP, SQUID, is to take a tour through a genre flipbook, combining deep house, wonky downtempo, jazz, blues and more. The key to her versatility is that she just does a lot and does it all well: singing, playing, producing and penning political fire into her emotive lyrics. Who adds DJ to their list of career achievements at the height of the pandemic? Squidgenini does, a renaissance woman for our times.

I’ll leave her aspirations on the wheels of steel for another time and instead focus on the diverse offerings of her new record. Opener All Made Up gets right down to business, mixing up the different sounds rolling around in Squidgenini’s head. A bittersweet r’n’b vocal puts a bass heavy house beat to work. The club energy is the energetic yin to the melancholy yang of Squidgenini’s song, where the complexities of a relationship just dissolve into mist: “I feel you closely when the sun’s out / When I’m tired I seem to lose you somehow / Always chasing for the one that we all made up.” It takes on an oddly political dimension as she darkens her themes:  “What would you say if I told you to just look the other way? While I stole from you and lied to your face? … What would your emotions be keeping alive?” Hints of power imbalances and gaslighting impart a sense of unease, emotionally hardening the seductive r’n’b sounds.

Circle;Line brings much more syncopation to the beats and, am I crazy or is that a hint of something latin shuffling in the mix? It sounds like an update on Sade for the modern era as Squidgenini flips the theme of All Made Up, unhealthily shared illusions become intractable differences of perspective “neither one of us is wrong, but we stay blind when we fight for so long.” Again, it feels like something more than the he-said-she-said of romance, a lesson which can be generalised for much of our contemporary experience.

TMO has even more complex rhythm, really plunging into bass-heavy wonky sounds, or is it UK garage? The way Squidgenini throws styles into the blender, it can get uncannily weird trying to work out just what you’re listening to. Even as she throws up a genre smokescreen, Squidgenini is making an emotional escape from the difficult questions that have beset her so far, singing “Take, take, take me out of this place.” You know, I feel like she might get there on Into My Heart. Abandoning some of the experimentation that got us this far, she focuses on more of that driving, bass-heavy dancefloor action and a sleek vocal line and this, to me, is the most effective pairing on the whole record. It does add that by now familiar extra lyrical dimension, making a sexy club anthem into a lesson in self-love: “may I be liberated, celebrating my love, may I fall even deeper into my heart!” A lot of the work that Squidgenini does on SQUID feels built on a foundation of ‘90s r’n’b and dance. Strip it back to basics and I get strong vibes of Madonna, Janet Jackson and Salt’n’Peppa. If I were to have a problem with anything here, it’s that Squidgenini is really trying to have her genre layer cake and eat it too - sometimes it’s very rich and dense. I love hybridisation but every now and then there’s something to be said for simple, classic lines and a cut like Into My Heart says it very well indeed.

Speaking of stripping back, Trust takes another route again to the finish, amping the soul as well as the hidden jazz and blues in the sound as it pulls out the dance beats. The vocal harmonies are the most entrancing on the whole EP. The interpersonal vulnerability is the strongest it is anywhere on SQUID, as Squidgenini wails “I don’t trust myself with my love!” The rich interplay of the vocal multitracking somehow makes it right even if nothing else can. It’s the wish fulfillment that got me into this game: music makes it good.

Squidgenini has taken her time putting out a substantial, recorded offering. It arrives as a window onto her complex process, the meshing gears of her musical and lyrical mind. As an artistic statement it feels like a signpost to where she’s going as much as where she’s at. The many arms of the cephalopod reaching out for more and more, pulling it in and pastiching each new element into the music. It should come as no surprise, really, Squidgenini has the restlessly questing mind that’s the trademark of a renaissance woman.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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