Squeeze Album: “U.K. Squeeze”

Though their subsequent albums would take a more staid approach to pop music, this debut is perhaps Squeeze's most interesting effort. Having dismissed the songs they brought to the studio, producer John Cale forced songwriters Difford & Tillbrook to compose a new album on the fly. The result is less highly polished than subsequent releases, but it's filled with a liveliness that would never again be this evident.

Cale's production, and the band's arrangements, have a great deal more edge to them than subsequent recordings. The energy of 1978 brings something of a Boomtown Rats' snap to Difford & Tillbrooks fantastically melodic pop.

Followup LPs focussed more on the pop songwriting and dropped the utter quirkiness of this debut. Which is too bad, as the combination sums to more than the parts.

UK squeezes first and best album - punk new wave period before they became a mellow sappy soft rock band - disregard that critical review unless you do not like new wave of the late seventies.

This is a fun album but for prime Squeeze you need to skip ahead to the next one, Cool for Cats, and then proceed from there. This is mostly the producer's fault. Having said that, it's still worth a listen especially if you want to hear Squeeze not sounding much like Squeeze. It's just a really weird album in their discography. Luckily, it didn't ruin them for the goodness that came later.

Squeeze's debut album is all over the map musically. It rocks surprisingly hard...not as soulful as subsequent releases so it might not be what you expect, but it's still a very strong debut. Two tracks that truly stand out are "Strong In Reason" which sounds like Velvet Underground meets Television and "Take Me I'm Yours" which is very catchy and their first hit single. Coincidently, that's the one song on the album that wasn't produced by John Cale, which tells me the band wanted to go in a different direction than what Cale wanted them to. I'll say Squeeze made the right choice.

In addition, my CD has two bonus tracks that were not on the original release..."Deep Cuts" and the bluesy "Heartbreak".

This is not a typical Squeeze offering. If you love the great hook-filled melodies that made Tillbrook and Difford one of pop music's most endearing song writing teams, you'll be disppointed in this early album. I saw Squeeze in concert a few times, and they cooked. A great rock'n roll band. Here, the performance, vocals, and production are all far below the quality you'd expect from Squeeze. If you listen to the rest of their CD's or albums, you hear a remarkable recording history that spanned over 20 years. If you love catchy pop tunes, try RIDICULOUS, BABYLON AND ON, SOME FANTASTIC PLACE, or one of their compilations or Greatest Hits packages. Great band, brilliant recording artists, fantastic song writers.