Neither the first nor, I suspect, the last time for me to feature Squeeze, a band who have given me as much pleasure as many, and continue so to do, over, gulp, their, so far, 48 year, and counting, career. Possibly now more of a heritage act, featuring Glenn Tillbrook and Chris Difford, plus whomsoever available from the rotating door of other members and additional hired hands, they still put on a stocking show, capable of pulling surprises out the hat and even, if not that much in the way of new material, the odd, unexpected and inspired cover version. To be fair, Difford, the deeper voice to Tillbrook's higher and clearer register, often just strumming his rhythm guitar quietly side stage, with a bemused expression on his face, doesn't always bother. No lover of transatlantic plane travel, he has been known to sit out the max of world tours, even to the home of their reliable US fanbase, staying back at home in England. But Tillbrook has always done most the heavy lifting, as the main and lead voice, give or take Cool For Cats and the other episodic showpieces taken by Difford, as well as being a finely inventive lead guitarist. ( I often wonder whether the Difford free band attempt Cool For Cats, with it being one of their more popular songs? I guess I will find out one day.)
Home was the obvious theme to parade this song, as it is and always has been one of my favourites. Home, and the awkwardnesses often thereof, has been a recurring feature in Difford's lyrics, his writing the epitome of kitchen sink drama, his songs often little soap operas. Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, the album for which is is drawn, came at a difficult junction for the band. Arguably at the peak of earlier success, maybe just past, the band had broken up following 1982's Sweets From a Stranger, the lure of bangles duo success having proven too strong. And why not? Being the authors of all the songs, why tag along a band to dilute the earning potential, even if the reality was more of internal friction and the "musical differences" that had already seen Jools Holland, very much a live focus of the band, jump ship an album or so before. But Difford/Tillbrook, the duo and the eponymous album, was not the golden egg hoped for, necessitating a return to the golden goose. Squeeze were reborn, and even Jools was back to help celebrate, if but for a while. (It wouldn't be long, sadly, before he again jumped ship, taking avuncular sticksman, Gilson Lavis, off with him to his R&B Orchestra.) In fact, bar the absence of erstwhile bassist, John Bentley, this was nearly the same line up as for Argy Bargy and East Side Story, the twin lodestones of the Squeeze magic, with Keith Wilkinson coming in to replace him, fresh from the Difford-Tillbrook enterprise.
Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti was a muted success as a reincarnation, 32 in the UK album charts. I don't think the US even noticed. The songs were largely a good deal more complicated than previously and struggled with a slightly clunky production, an if in doubt add more textures school of thought. So a lot of kitchen sink. This was very much the house style of producer, Laurie Latham, who also worked for Paul Young, the Stranglers and, notably, Ian Dury: Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick was one of his. I remember frowning a little at the time I first heard Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, but the style grew on me. I guess, as someone with always an ear out for the bass guitar, which Latham clearly was too, given the prominence he gave Pino Palladino, JJ Burnel and Norman Watt-Roy elsewhere, I took pleasure in how high in the mix he placed Keith Wilkinson. This was the catnip that made me wonder, with time, whether this is their best album. Or favourite, as we writers mean when we say best. Tillbrook's voice is all over the place in the chorus, as the arrangement lurches about, barely holding together, an orchestra seeming to saw away in a different room and to a different backing track. I love it, and the marriage between it and the preceding track, Last Time Forever, is little short of perfect, the one seeming to lead into the other. (So, a word, play the clip below first, and then the one higher up the page, for full effect.) In fact, it was as these two tracks burst into my ears, more than likely in the car, driving, the result was an epiphany: Squeeze were back, back, back. The fact that the songs that then complete the disc were a little meh mattered not a jot, that was often the Squeeze way, where they tucked the filler and the songs by other than the two front men.
I actually got to see this line-up live, at around this time. I think it was at Birmingham's Powerhouse, a venue long gone. Previously the Locarno, it was a tacky dance hall in a the concrete monstrosity that built up around the top of Hurst Street. (Opposite Mr Egg, should anyone familiar be reading or remember, a fabled restaurant, open until the wee hours, and from the wee hours, selling all things egg, usually fried.) It was a terrific show and certainly blew the socks off the show I caught at Birmingham Odeon, a good few years before, between the debut and Cool For Cats, when they were still struggling a bit with image, uncertain if they were punks or new wave, going down the calibre tunesmithery as a result. And, in the times since, whilst good, they have never quite been that good. For good measure, here's how I found them about 6 years ago, within the content of Day 3.
Squeeze have a number of other songs about home in their canon. Indeed, home life, and all the twists and turns associated, form their most prominent feature, Difford possessing almost documentarian skills in evoking the joy and grief of the real grubbiness and shabbiness of suburban family life, of folk making the best of whatever life's allotted. Here's two more from lesser known and latter day releases. They could almost be about the same fella, objective witness and his own subjective interpretation.
