At the Ivors this year Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford won the PRS Outstanding Contribution To British Music award for their songwriting partnership in the group Squeeze.
They were Britpop before the word existed and provided a playlist of succinct pop anthems about the minutia of British life.
Tonight half of that partnership, Glenn Tilbrook with his foppish curly hair, boundless enthusiasm and mischief written all over his boyish face is off and running with the power pop of Untouchable from his album Transatlantic Ping Pong.
It’s a start-to-finish smorgasbord of great songwriting, solo material like Neptune, Reinventing The Wheel new songs Still, Relentless Pursuit, Product, Through The Net and a peppering of Squeeze classics like Slap and Tickle, Up The Junction, Is That Love and Tempted which saw a member of the audience coaxed onto the stage.
Tilbrook’s guitar playing was a revelation, he cajoled his Stratocaster into angular, chromatic phrases with a penchant for the uncommon chord or two.
The main set climaxed with what can only be described as a cosmic jam, songs segueing into one another to great and humorous effect. Parallel Worlds with its Stevie Wonder like groove ending in a Pink Floyd in Pompeii like frenzy of guitar and keyboards, melding into Take Me I’m Yours, Video Killed The Radio Star, I Believe I Can Fly, Cool for Cats and Loving You.
The suburban lyricism of the Squeeze classics are the perfect pop vignettes to fill you with a Ready Brek glow of warmth on a chilly October night.
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