Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There is something quite comforting about watching Squeeze perform their huge back catalogue of hits, particularly when their set is now liberally laced with tracks from their first brand new album in 17 years – that being Cradle to the Grave, the “soundtrack” for Danny Baker’s life story telling sitcom currently running on B.B.C.2 starring Peter Kay.

As soon as Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford stroll on stage, following a nostalgic trip down memory lane courtesy of the screen suspended at the back, the audience as one are transported back several years as Hourglass, Is That Love, Annie Get Your Gun and Another Nail In My Heart are all rattled out with ease, gusto and a clear love of performing with a sound that – even for the glorious acoustics provided by The Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – is exemplary.

It was a little surprising, then, that the momentum stalled a little due to some technical difficulties with radio mikes before “normal service” was resumed, with a slightly modified, slower-tempoed version of Electric Trains seeing Difford take up the vocals.

Not that it mattered. Squeeze laid down the teen-aged, angst riddled soundtrack of many who had gathered so a little bit of a hiatus was never going to dampen their enthusiasm nor, it seems, would it of the band whose love for what they were playing shined as brightly as the surprisingly effective light show the gig provided.

There is also the fact that many of their songs are not fifteen minute monoliths but, instead, are three minute snapshots of instances of a life constantly on the move with which all could identify with.

Pulling Mussels (From a Shell), Tempted, the superbly moving Labelled with Love and – of course – Up the Junction (which “boy” of a certain age can’t identify with the lyrics of this masterpiece in a similar way to The Specials’ Much Too Young?) are nothing more than self-contained kitchen sink dramas, set to superb music and voicing deftly crafted screenplays, so that the experience of listening remains a potent “visual” event.

It really is possible to sense the atmosphere of room filled with “nappies smelly”, see the bathroom utensils in the hotel and glimpse the “cross on the wall” of the old lady who “looks like a witch and whose neighbours she sickens”.

Squeeze are, in effect, the lyrical Polaroid Instamatic of their heyday, so it is with great relief that the new songs are dealt with in a similar vein, with Open and Snap, Crackle & Pop and Only 15 underlining that class is permanent, that memories are often near- eponymous and that new experiences are always best lived to the full, Cool For Cats company.

Chris High