If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson and 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 Best British Pop Music Bands of All Time.
Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti has long been a favorite album of mine, a Desert Island Disc if you will, with some of the most powerfully produced, intelligently written and passionately performed songs in the entire Squeeze canon.
There’s plenty of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness on the best British pressings — such as this one — qualities the domestic pressings are sorely lacking, having been mastered from dub tapes. 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 these sides.
What to Listen For
The overall sound needs to be 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).
For more What to Listen For advice on other titles we have auditioned, please click here.
This record sounds best to us this way:
For more modestly helpful title-specific advice, click here.
