“IT was just like being 20 again,” were the words of one satisfied Squeeze concert-goer transported back to the music of their youth. Over 100 minutes and 25 songs, the sold-out Barbican had been treated to a songwriting masterclass.
There is little to add to the column inches devoted to the partnership of Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford – but it’s clear that these Deptford musicians have worked hard at their craft.
Britpop a decade before that was a thing – Squeeze are as British as HP Sauce. It’s hard at this distance to imagine them as edgy twenty-somethings, but after the usual recriminations and sabbaticals, they seem very comfortable as a more mature outfit.
They must be one of the best-dressed bands on the circuit too – resplendent peacocks in stripes and checks. Eight strong, this incarnation works superbly as a unit, well oiled from significant recent touring (including a Glastonbury slot this summer).
The songwriters mostly let their material do the work, unlike opener Badly Drawn Boy [Damon Gough], who provided hilarious between-song commentary.
Once you’d tired of seeing Tilbrook closing his eyes to lean into another chorus or Difford smiling benignly, there was lots of spectacle around them. Bassist Owen Biddle was charismatically animated throughout, and to his right, Stephen Large had star quality on keyboard and accordion.
Over on the other side, Melvin Duffy received lots of congratulatory looks from Tilbrook for his pedal steel work, and the drummer/percussion combo of Simon Hanson and Steve Smith was twirling synchronicity throughout. A sartorial and musical feast.
Squeeze have been busy in the studio too, recording not one but two new albums. The first goes back to tunes they wrote together 50 years ago, but never properly recorded, called Trixie’s, while the second is new songs inspired by revisiting that “’lost’ Squeeze album if you will”..
The early showings are the group finding their style(s), feet planted pretty squarely in the middle of the road with no sign of new wave. One Beautiful Summer was a promising recent tune, given a strangely effective robotic vocal (possibly an unintended consequence of Difford’s seemingly ongoing vocal problems that saw them cut short the opening night of the tour in Sheffield). Luckily everyone else was in fine voice.
Another Nail In My Heart was a good example of Squeeze’s standard stock in trade. By almost any other yardstick, there is little standard about these songs, full of melody and (in concert especially) Tilbrook’s great guitar.
You were also reminded of how cleverly they’ve used good producers over the years to lift the material up a notch or two – Slap And Tickle, for example, could have stayed as pub rock.
It was the different ones that stood out. Whether coming to them fresh or for the thousandth time, Cool For Cats and Up The Junction just have something special. Up The Junction lies in the shadow of Ray Davies’s Waterloo Sunset but is actually its more mildewed peer.
Once encouraged by Difford, the audience were dancing by the end, taken by the band to some fantastic place.
Review by Paul Rhodes
FROM the Squeeze website, three months ago: “If your question is, ‘When will either of these two new albums be released?’, our honest answer is, ‘We don’t know!’…but at this stage that is unlikely to be in 2024.”