When it comes to storytelling, very few pop groups have done it as well as Squeeze. But even the group’s songwriting mainstays Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook would be hard pushed to devise a plot twist like the one that has resulted in Trixies, their first album in eight years but the first they ever wrote.

Before the sky-high classics such as ‘Up The Junction’, ‘Tempted’, ‘Cool For Cats’, ‘Another Nail In My Heart’ and ‘Labelled With Love’, before the 2008 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, the Mojo Icon award, the quintessential Cradle To The Grave, the world tours and festival highlight sets, and before 2017’s celebrated The Knowledge, there was Trixies.

Written by the teenage Difford (19) and Tilbrook (16) at the very start of their songwriting partnership, when concept albums and rock operas were de rigueur and with the snappy underworld vernacular of New York fabulist Damon Runyon filling Difford’s thoughts, the songs are a collection of stories set in a fictional night club, Trixies.

The only problem with these songs – crime scene vignettes like ‘The Place We Call Mars’ and ‘Don’t Go Out In The Dark’; the riotous come-hither rapacity of ‘Why Don’t You’; and the evocative acoustic scene setter ‘You Get The Feeling’ – was that, back in 1974, the musical vision of the young creators exceeded their virtuosity. “We fully committed ourselves to songwriting but this was three or four years before we even got to make our first record. Long story short, these were songs that we just didn’t have enough musical experience to record properly” explains Difford.

Fifty years on, and having rediscovered the original cassette, that problem no longer exists for the band whose live shows are legendary and who have played more than 600 shows since reuniting in 2007. So what better way to mark 50 years of Squeeze than to complete the circle and realise the vision they had for Trixies? “The songs that we wrote then astound me. I’m proud of them now, and I’m particularly proud that it was young us that did that. These are very much the same songs that we wrote then,” says Tilbrook, “The only difference is that now I can teach the songs to the rest of the band. Back then, I didn’t even know what the names of the chords were!”

Now this precocious opening volley of songs – under the guiding production hand of Squeeze’s bassist Owen Biddle (The Roots, John Legend, Al Green) – finally gets to enjoy its moment in the spotlight.

And by returning Difford and Tilbrook to the birth of their creative partnership, Trixies has acted as the catalyst to a latter-day songwriting surge. On the heels of Trixies, an album of brand new Squeeze songs – recorded concurrently with Trixies – is finished and set to follow in the future. “The act of revisiting the Trixies songs had me in tears,” smiles Tilbrook, “partly because they’re so good, but also because I’m aware of all the stuff that I’ve still yet to hear and write.” The sentiments are echoed by Difford: “It really fills me with joy that at my age we can discover that we wrote such great songs when we were teenagers. I’m very proud of that.”