Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Life seen through the eyes of young men, of teenagers with the whole world waiting at their feet should be a joyous musical occasion. Instead, it often turns their vision to a physical concept that would underline just how the times and the political situation has shaped them, forced them to see in the end life not as carefree and filled with possibility, but instead as a series of tales weaved together tempered by experience and delusion.

However, the maturity of youth is a blessing, especially when it comes to light that what might have been can still be revealed and in the case of Squeeze’s first studio album in eight years, the incredible concept album of Trixies, the reveal is one of the upmost and brilliant recordings in many years, matching perhaps that of the group’s peers, Madness’ The Liberty Of Norton Folgate.

Set in a fictional nightclub and written at the very start of Glenn Tilbrook’s and Chris Difford’s careers, the album is a prize, a reminder if one be needed that the views of our past can often be enlarged in the modern world and sparkle, illuminate, be the supernova that lasts a lifetime, and Trixies is that and more.

To start at the beginning is not always where the story commences, and it is to the enormous credit to the pair, as well as their well-picked band, Owen Biddle, Melvin Duffy, Steve Smith, Stephen Large, Simon Hanson, Danica Dora, and Leon Tilbrook, that the album, the collection of people whose lives are dissected unwrapped with such cool precision and loving style is so true to what came later, that this as an album at the other end of their careers is so multi-layered, so intricate, so cool, and beautifully youthful.

With tracks such as You Get The Feeling, The Place We Call Mare, the sublime The Dancer, Good Riddance, Anything But Me, and the exquisite two parter of the album’s grace of passion, Trixies, the whole affair is nothing short of excellent, and mindful of what is always waiting to be rediscovered, what is biting at the back of the mind to be released.

Squeeze return with a full embrace of memory and fresh perspective, a collection of songs that deal with a concept of extraordinary ordinariness, and it is to be believed.

Ian D. Hall