Songfacts®:

• The British post-punk band Squid formed in Brighton, England in 2017. This eight-minute epic is the closing track of their debut album, Bright Green Field.
• This is the second-oldest track on Bright Green Field. It originated when some of the band were staying in the Chippenham house belonging to the parents of drummer/singer Ollie Judge one summer in the late 2010s. They wrote this song on a whiteboard, kick-starting a method of writing music they continue to use. "We draw stuff up, try and keep it visual," guitarist Louis Borlase told Apple Music. "It also makes us feel quite efficient."
• "Pamphlets" became an important part of Squid's sets; the band often closes a gig with it because of its long blowout ending.
• Lyrically, this is a satirical poke at right-wing politics. Judge explained it's about someone getting influenced by the extremist nationalistic propaganda posted through their letterbox. "It imagines a person with that as their only source of news being taken over by these pamphlets," he said.
• German illustrator and visual artist Raman Djafari created and directed the animated video. He said the clip is "a meditation on the feeling of being unfit, unlovable, not compatible and the manic anxiety and stress that this results in."
• Squid recorded Bright Green Field over a space of three weeks in producer Dan Carey's COVID-safe London studio during the 2020 fall. Before decamping to Carey's workplace, the five-piece wrote and rehearsed the record in a barn owned by a Chippenham pub owner using equipment borrowed from Foals' guitar tech. Judge told Apple Music that by the time they brought this song back to Chippenham after performing it for a couple of years, "It had changed so much, because it had had so much time to have so many audiences responding to it in different ways. It's very live music."