Hot Stamper Pressings of Personal Favorites Available Now
If you think you might enjoy the mashup of Pub Rock and New Wave that this group unleashed on the pop music scene of the ’70s and ’80s I could not recommend any album of theirs more highly than Argybargy.
Squeeze’s prime period with Jools Holland on keyboards encompasses four albums, any of which is worth owning. The band really gets going with their second album, Cool for Cats (1979), pulls it all together and takes it to another level for their breakthrough third, Argybargy (1980), and produces two more of high quality, East Side Story (1981, produced mostly by Elvis Costello) and the darker but equally brilliant Sweets from a Stranger (1982).
I’m a huge fan of all four, as well as two from their later days, the amazing-to-this-day Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti (1985) and the weaker but enjoyable Babylon and On (1987). I play all of them on a regular basis.
If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson and probably quite a few other lesser-knowns from this era, Squeeze is the band for you. I put them right up there with Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel in the pantheon of British Pop Music of the era.
The Sound
There’s plenty of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness on the best British pressings, qualities the domestic pressings are sorely lacking. If you want to hear this music right, on vinyl it’s British or nothing, and with one of our Hot Stamper pressings it’s British and everything — everything that’s good about this recording is captured on this on the copies we offer.
What to Listen For
Extension up top was hard to come by on most pressings. When you hear those lovely highs you can hear how much they add to the sound.
The overall sound is rich and tubey, not dry, thin or modern. Clarity and space are nice but not if they come at the expense of the smooth, rich, natural sound of tubes (whether there are tubes in the chain or not).
A Rock Masterpiece
This is one of the band’s Masterpieces, as well as a Desert Island Disc for yours truly.
What qualifies a record to be a Masterpiece needs no explanation. We will make every effort to limit the list to one entry per artist or group, although some exceptions have already occurred to me, so that rule will no doubt be broken from time to time. As Ralph Waldo Emerson so memorably wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”
For a record to come to my Desert Island Disc, said record: 1) must have at some time during my decades as a music lover and audio enthusiast been played enthusiastically, fanatically even, causing me to feel what Leonard Bernstein called “the joy of music”; 2) I must currently respect the album, and; 3) I must think I will want to listen to the music fairly often and well into the future (not knowing how long I may be stranded there).
How many records meet the Desert Island Disc criteria? Certainly many more than you can see when you click on the link, but new titles are coming online as time permits.
We recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with the accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.
The list is purposely wide-ranging. Yes, it includes some well-known albums (Tumbleweed Connection, The Yes Album), but we’ve also gone out of our way to choose excellent titles from famous artists that are less well known (Atlantic Crossing, Kiln House, Dad Loves His Work).
Which simply means that you won’t find Every Picture Tells a Story or Rumours or Sweet Baby James on this list because masterpieces of that caliber should already be in your collection.
Many of these may not be to your taste, but they sure are to ours.
Out of the thousands of records we have auditioned and reviewed, here are a hundred or so that maybe are less well known but have stood the test of time for us. We think they are more than deserving of a serious listen.
Side One
Notes by Wikipedia
Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)
Pulling Mussels received positive reviews from music critics. It has been variously described as “a timeless cult classic,” “a brilliant slice of pop genius,” “a pop classic of the new wave era,” and “a piece of pop mastery.”
In 2007, Anna Borg wrote, “The build up before the chorus always gets me, even 25 years later.” Allmusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the song as “a vivid portrait of a seaside vacation where Difford’s vignettes are made all the more vivid by Tilbrook’s bright, invigorating pop.” It is regarded as one of Squeeze’s catchiest songs.
The phrase “pulling mussels” is British slang for sexual intercourse, mainly used in England.
Another Nail In My Heart
Separate Beds
Misadventure
I Think I’m Go Go
Chris Difford said about the lyrics, “This was a song about touring, which could be a very strange experiences. It would get to the stage where I’d think ‘I don’t know where I am, I don’t know which county I am in, what time we’re onstage, or who I’m sleeping with.’ ‘I think I’m go go’ was the turn of phrase in the band at the time.” Difford continued, “Interestingly, this song was very popular in America. The first verse is about being in Amsterdam because a lot of our early gigs were in Holland. Glenn’s dad lived out there and he used to arrange gigs for us. It was always good fun playing there. The second verse is about New York and mentions liquor stores, rodeos and PIX, which was an American radio station. The last verse is about London.”
Glenn Tilbrook said of the song, “This was a step forward in our imaginations. It was influenced lyrically by the fact we have been whopped around the head and rendered bewildered by the amount of traveling we’d been doing. We all found it bewildering, but I had the sense that Chris probably felt this more so than the rest of us.” Tilbrook also said, “It’s very Beatles-like and also has a similar sound to our song, ‘The Knack.’ There’s a direct through line from ‘The Knack’ to ‘I Think I’m Go Go’, with that sense of other-worldness. The use of strings added to that feeling. I wanted to contrast real strings with synth strings and change the feel between the verses. This meant the listener got a sense of being jolted out of one mood or another.”
Side Two
Farfisa Beat
Here Comes That Feeling
Vicky Verky
If I Didn’t Love You
Glenn Tilbrook said, “This is a really storming lyric from Chris [Difford] and was chosen as a different single in America. It was a massive radio hit there, particularly on the East Coast, whereas it was just an album track in Britain. The lyric caught a lot of people’s imaginations because of that thing Chris does so well, picking up on small, almost irrelevant details. What he wrote here rang absolutely true to me and was all the more powerful for it.” Tilbrook continued, “The line ‘The record jumps on a scratch’ was such a gift that I had to use it, so we sang ‘If I, If I, If I, If I, If I.’”
Chris Difford said, “I used to love playing this song live. Glenn and I sang it together as a duet, an octave apart. Lyrically it has to be my proudest moment from [Argybargy] and it takes me back to New York when I was living there and writing lyrics. It’s about the early cozy part of a relationship, which I call the nesting stage. It’s a lovely place to be, somewhere where I think people only go two or three times in their life. At the same time it has that juxtaposition of emotions saying ‘If I didn’t love you I’d hate you,’ because at the back of your mind you’ve got that insecurity about your inability to have a proper relationship with somebody.”
Difford also praised Tilbrook’s guitar solo, saying, “I also love Glenn’s slide guitar solo. When he first did it I thought ‘This guy’s out of his tree. What’s he doing?,’ but it’s brilliant.”
Wrong Side Of The Moon
There At The Top
Further Reading