OH what a happy day! Squeeze return with their first new album since 1998 and it’s an unalloyed delight, full of bitter-sweet short-story dramas, three-minute plays wrapped in song.
The sound is instantly recognisable, for whatever the line-up so long as Squeeze has that striking mixture of Glenn Tilbrook’s sweetly soaring vocals and Chris Difford rumbling along an octave below, then all is well with the world.
The title track was written for the Danny Baker BBC sitcom Cradle To Grave and it’s a resurgent rise of a number, while Nirvana is typical Squeeze song-play, jaunty music telling the sad story of a couple whose wished-for freedom turns sour once the kids leave home.
Happy Days is an uplifting hymn to the summer joys of escape, while the moving Sunny uses Beatles-like strings to chart the growing up of a boy who would be Hendrix.
All these years later, the boys from Deptford are still Cool For Cats – older, yes, but just as cool and just as melodious.
Review by Spencer Taylor
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