Squeeze: Trixies Review – Finally Completed Debut Album Proves Teenage Dreams Are Hard to Overcome | pressure

IIn interviews to promote their 16th studio album, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook have been frank about the reason for its existence. After the world mocked The Knowledge conference in 2017, someone told Tilbrook: “No one is interested in Squeeze’s record. What matters is Squeeze’s story.” “That stayed with me,” he says.

So not only does Trixies have a story – it’s a concept and musical album about a fictional nightclub – but there’s also a great story around the album. It was written when Difford and Tilbrook were teenagers in 1974 but were left without recording because they could not play the songs they had written properly. It’s a new record and something for fans who always want the old stuff.

You can definitely hear 1974 in it: Not only does The Place We Call Mars borrow a planet from David Bowie, it appropriates a vocal riff and a Mick Ronson-esque guitar solo. Hell on Earth has a few sparks in its staccato keyboards (Deford said he originally wrote the music on an RMI piano, as used by Ron Mael). Could it be the rock tango of “Why Don’t You Owe” the Alex Harvey Band’s rousing version of Next, from 1973?

It really sounds like a musician. There’s a lot of description of what’s going on, a lot of archetypes: the brass stomp, the rock ‘n’ roll song, the sad song and so on. You can imagine these performances being performed from the front of the stage by a figure gazing at the gods while dancers behind them act out the scenarios. It’s been described as Runyonesque, which is true in the sense that Oasis is the Beatles, but the words were written by a teenager – a precocious teenager, yes, but still writing about things he’d never experienced. Hence the lyrics are a clever arrangement of clichés but not much more, although the complex internal rhymes are indeed there.

They would all be transformed by a stage show behind them, but they lack the drama and hooks of an indie album. There are cool parts where you can hear what Squeeze would become, but they are parts. Fun and good idea, but you’re not getting rid of East Side Story to make room for it.