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. Because, if truth be told, the band who have given us sky-high classics such as ‘Up The Junction’, ‘Tempted’, ‘Cool For Cats’, ‘Another Nail In My Heart’ and ‘Labelled With Love’ weren’t planning another album. And that was ok. They’d scaled the highs of pop stardom; they’d disbanded and reconvened; fallen out and made up. Along the way, they got to bear witness to the effect their songbook has had on generations of fans – their compositions covered by artists as disparate as Erykah Badu, Tricky, Patti Austin, The Shins, Joe Cocker, The Lathums and Questlove & Robert Glasper. Their songs even pop up from time to time on Desert Island Discs, most recently when comedian Bob Mortimer revealed that he had already requested that the title track of their 1993 album Some Fantastic Place be played at his funeral.

So, given that 2017’s The Knowledge had garnered some of the best reviews of their career, this felt like a good time to step back from the studio on a high and let their existing work do the heavy lifting for a while. After all, if Billy Joel can regularly pack out Madison Square Gardens over 30 years since his last album, then why shouldn’t this eight-headed iteration of Squeeze – whose live performances over the past decade have been harvesting superlatives across both sides of the Atlantic – build on their reputation as an essential live draw?

Good question. And the answer came in the form of a cassette of demos, recorded on a borrowed Revox tape machine in 1974. 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 were a collection of stories set in a fictional night club, Trixies.

Now it wasn’t like Difford and Tilbrook had forgotten about these songs; more that, through the fog of memory, they had filed them away as the nascent work of their fledgling partnership. Only when a friend sent them a better-quality copy of those demos were they minded to re-evaluate those recordings. “We were surprised at how advanced it was,” recalls Difford. “I actually felt very emotional listening to these young guys and the songs that they’d written together.” 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 the musical vision of the teenage creators exceeded their virtuosity.

Fifty years on, that problem no longer existed. What better way to mark 50 years of Squeeze than to complete the circle and realise the vision they had for Trixies? “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!”

For a group who haven’t always found it easy to map out a future that wasn’t in some way overshadowed by their past, this is a somewhat ironic turn of events. There were, at times, moments where it felt as though the excellence of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s work didn’t always correspond to the demands of the zeitgeist. As the ’80s turned into the ’90s, Squeeze set about delivering a masterful trilogy of albums – Frank, Play and Some Fantastic Place – that reflected changes in their own lives. These records, with their meditations on addiction, failing marriages and even the pair’s own friendship all came as the ripples of acid house pushed everything that had preceded it to the margins.

A few years later, of course, Britpop would come along, and groups like Blur and Pulp would follow Squeeze in the lineage of pop’s great British storytellers. By that time, however, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were pulling in different directions. Difford, now a recovering alcoholic, had fallen out of love with the touring life. The ensuing years would see him flexing his lyrical muscle with a host of other singers. Tilbrook, on the other hand, had come to the realisation that his love of performing superseded the security that comes with being the joint custodian of a trusted brand. Reflecting on Squeeze’s decade of inactivity following the release of their 1998 album Domino, Tilbrook recalls “this was a necessary period for me because I really cherished the time on the road, whether it was performing to thousands or – perhaps even more so – at the most intimate of venues.”

By the time they reconvened in 2007, Difford and Tilbrook were now the only original members of the group who, back in 1974, had named themselves after The Velvet Underground album which featured no original members. They made a virtue of their differences with the At Odds Couple tour – the irony being that the period of self-discovery following their separation had actually deepened their bond. Speaking in 2015, Difford enthused that “we’ve fallen into a new routine of listening to each other and understanding each other.” The measure of that understanding was revealed in the same year with the release of Cradle To The Grave, Squeeze’s first album of new material in 17 years. Written as a soundtrack to the eponymous BBC sit-com (based on the early life of broadcaster and childhood friend Danny Baker), Cradle To The Grave transcended the vehicle for which it was nominally written, with Q Magazine describing it as “quintessential Squeeze” and AllMusic’s Stephen Erlewine praising this “celebratory affirmation of Difford and Tilbrook’s special chemistry as songwriters and bandleaders.”

Both here and on its successor, 2017’s celebrated The Knowledge, Difford welcomed lyrical input from Tilbrook. “Back in the early days,” he reflects, “I think I would have got into a bad mood about anybody trying to change the words I’d written. But these days when Glenn contributes, I actually enjoy the sort of interplay.” The measure of their method was abundant in the response to the album and ensuing concerts from fans and critics alike. Reviewing Squeeze’s 2020 show at Madison Square Gardens for Salon, Annie Zaleski noted that their renewed aura of creative urgency extended to every single musician on stage.

And with Squeeze, that really is a point worth dwelling on. Over the years, several exceptional musicians have passed through the revolving door but this current iteration of the group – completed by Simon Hanson, Stephen Large, Steve Smith, Melvin Duffy, Owen Biddle and Danica Dora – has, for the best part of a decade, been delivering a live show that has consistently harvested superlatives across both sides of the Atlantic. For both Difford and Tilbrook, perhaps the greatest source of gratification has been the improbable spectacle of gazing out at an audience whose average age seems to be shrinking. “Just recently,” elaborates Difford, “when we played in Atlanta, we walked out on stage and Glenn and I looked at each other as if to say, ‘Are we at the right gig?’ It was a young crowd. I guess it must be down to streaming. Because, of course, that’s what happens now. People have discovered Squeeze by bouncing off other records that they’re listening to.”

Both within and beyond the auspices of their “day job”, Difford and Tilbrook take their charitable work seriously. Difford continues to devote much of his time working with recovering addicts and alcoholics in prisons and rehab centres. Tilbrook is a vocal campaigner for Trussell, which works to end the need for food banks in the United Kingdom. Both with Squeeze and as a solo artist, Tilbrook has used touring to raise money, awareness, and donations for food banks across the Trussell network and the band’s most recent release, in 2022, was an EP Food For Thought, the proceeds of which went to the charity.

More than ever though, the centre of their shared universe is the story that began with a small ad placed by Difford in a sweet shop which read: “Guitarist wanted for band with record deal and tour.” There was, of course, no record deal – or, indeed, even a band. But before the self-titled John Cale-produced album which announced Squeeze’s arrival to the wider world, before the run of Top 40 singles and albums (twelve apiece); before the 2008 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music and, three years later, the Mojo Icon award, there was Trixies, this precocious opening volley of songs which – under the guiding production hand of Biddle (The Roots, John Legend, Al Green) – finally gets to enjoy its moment in the spotlight.

Both Difford and Tilbrook agree that it’s impossible to underestimate the important of Biddle’s production role on Trixies: “As well as his complete musicality and experience,” says Tilbrook, “Owen had an outsider’s perspective – not just on Squeeze, but on this set of songs. And also, in terms of dealing with me and Chris, he was great there too. We could collaborate that way and just bounce off each other without getting down each other’s throats.”

And by returning Difford and Tilbrook to the birth of their creative partnership, Trixies has acted as 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. And to have all these new songs alongside them, it really is the best of both worlds.”

Which brings us back to where we started. When you’re the creator of a canon that continues to live in the here and now, your past is anything but a dead weight. Instead, it walks alongside you, freeing you up to keep creating. “I would say that’s exactly how it is,” nods Difford, “I’ve never felt more inspired by my own band!” Tilbrook, meanwhile, goes one better: “I don’t ever want to split up now. To me it feels like we’re in a sort of golden age of what we do.”