Photo illustration by Renee Klahr, NPR/Courtesy of the artists Top row, left to right: Yard Act, Squid, Black Country, New Road. Bottom row: Legss, Shame, Dry Cleaning. May 06, 2021 Matthew Perpetua When the British band Squid released the single "Narrator" in January, everything about it felt like a dare. The song's sprawling length — 8:29 — is posted on the cover art, scrambling expectations and heralding greater ambitions from a group best known at that point for a frenzied punk tune, "Houseplants." "Narrator" traps that same energy within a tight Krautrock-ish groove, and when that wears out, the song coasts onwards with two spoken-word parts that illustrate feeling caught in the gravity of a self-absorbed person, the kind who lives as though they're the main character and everyone else is just a walk-on. It's a weird but effective set of contrasts — wild but controlled, artsy but focused on basic physical response, berserk emotion colliding with detached erudition. In other words, it's a song designed to make you ask, "What