Monday, September 6, 2010

Late: Is It Too Late


Squeeze: Is It Too Late

[purchase]

Our narrator has burned bridges galore, stealing money out "her" purse, getting drunk and stupid, and only then realizing that he was in love. Is it too late to "unload that gun" and get into her favor? Unless our unnamed foil is a complete idiot, the answer is probably "yes", but honestly, with such gleeful delivery, such cheerfulness, such breakneck uptempo presentation, it hardly seems like he cares.

You've never heard Squeeze like this, in full-blown barrelhouse rockabilly mode. But then, hardly anyone has heard Frank, in part because the piano-led album was overall such a diverse departure from their signature sound, in part because a label change at the wrong time buried sales despite critical celebration, and in part because by the tail end of the eighties, their greatest hits were already an essential part of the classic rock canon, so boldly that very little of what happened afterwards made a difference to the world. Still, there's joy here, if you're up for the risk.

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