Music fans love the story of “the lost album” — the one project that got abandoned or crushed by the business. Now, more than 50 years into their career, British pub-pop legends Squeeze have rested their pints long enough to revisit Trixies (BMG), a rock opera founding members Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook wrote as teenagers before they had a record deal. In 1974. The ambition! The naivete!
And the goods. Trixies is a song cycle centering on a mythical bar and its working class stiffs and gangsters that’s one-part Cheers, the other The Untouchables. Although its mid-’70s origins were in line with Squeeze’s propulsive pub rockin’, punk-adjacent roots, Trixies is not exactly the time machine longtime fans will remember (well, save for copious references to drinking). First, the technology used to make records has never been more flexible and imaginative. But most importantly (and expectedly), Difford and Tilbrook’s songwriting has gotten continuously more sophisticated and developed.
The swathe of great moments here is impressive. The proceedings begin with “What More Can I Say” and “You Get the Feeling,” two breezy acoustic numbers that conjure yacht rock ease and Laurel Canyon whimsy. The former feels like a travel commercial; the latter, a group of friends in Graham Nash’s living room, ca. ’69. But then the scenes kick in: “The Place We Call Mars” is a melancholy, Bowie-esque glam ascension, with Tilbrook perfectly channeling Mick Ronson, and “Hell on Earth” is the bouncy piano-powered nugget Madness forgot to write.
On the two tracks with Difford singing lead, he assumes the roles of sleazy dive bar narrator (“The Dancer”) and forlorn lover (the sophisto-pop “It’s Over”). There’s also crunchy tango (“Why Don’t You”) and a potential Stiff Records single (“The Jaguars”) that Nick Lowe could’ve produced. Given its scope, there’s no way this project could’ve been pulled off at any other point in Difford and Tilbrook’s storied career. Indeed, Trixies might be the duo’s personal masterpiece. So why stop at just an album? Somebody, please slip a flash drive of it to Baz Luhrmann.