Squeeze attests to the power of nostalgia and sentimentality when done right
It was clear that the Squeeze story had reached a pang of dénouement during their extra special takeover of London’s Koko.
“The audience is encouraged to arrive suited and booted for this special evening”, said the invitation. Everything about the evening felt marked with a celebratory air as dressed-up, eager fans congregated at the famed Camden venue, bolstered by the grand interior’s gilded architecture and roll-call of old jazz standards soundtracking the growing intrigue throughout the former late-Victorian hippodrome.
This is a concept show. Perhaps a first for Squeeze, but Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford aren’t playing Koko, they’re playing Trixies, the namesake fictional club that thematically anchors their 16th and latest album after eight years away from the studio. Such set dressing was furthered by a creaking Trixies neon sign, zapping and flickering as the lights dimmed and the nine-odd band arrived on the stage.
With no support, Squeeze took the stage around 8pm to perform Trixies in its entirety. There was an unmistakable glow to the new material, charged with buoyant energy that belied the pair’s vintage age.
Such youthful charm is largely due to the material’s resurfacing, all written by a teenage Tilbrook and Difford long before new wave’s arrival and when big rock opera ruled the charts, their conceptual narrative of the Trixies club and its many characters finally realised now they can actually play their ambitious but naïve compositions all these years later.
It goes a long way. Squeeze has bottled such precocious energy on their latest album, and it all shone on the evening’s first half. They’re having fun too, in a way that’s infectious, bringing in cabaret dancers at one point and even pulling in a surrealistic backing singer plucked straight from an old 1930s Fleischer cartoon, all flapper Betty Boop bob style to cast another fun shroud over the audience.
In an inverse way, it’s the first half which proves the most enchanting, Squeeze’s Trixies evening radiating a potent nostalgia and sentimental stir impossible not to get swept up in, and thus making the new material shine that bit brighter and with extra emotional resonance.
That said, they weren’t going to avoid the hits. After an intermission, Squeeze returned to reel through the big numbers, everything from ‘Cool for Cats’, Pulling Mussels’, ‘Tempted’, and ‘Up the Junction’ performed with effortless ease, yet bouncing sharper off the back of Trixies’ first half. The two sets gelled and mingled with each other marvellously, both repertoires dwelling in a pertinent proximity due to the close years of their original penning. Tilbrook’s guitar chops were on showcase too, a reminder of just how electric he can glide those fingers across the fretboard.
Not that Squeeze is over, but their seizure of Koko rang with a reflective edge, harkening back to the days when Tilbrook and Difford were hungry songwriters and still standing surprised by the road travelled, and with just the right amount of theatrical indulgence, Squeeze pulled off a joyously off-kilter night where sentimentality was as pitch-perfect as their wistful songbook.
