Squeeze - Big Squeeze: The Very Best of Squeeze (2002)

Be they hits or be they misses, Big Squeeze is yet another compilation of Squeeze's two-decade-plus contribution to the fine art of the praiseworthy pop single. And why not? Like all the other conceivably-inseparable Great British double acts–Morecambe and Wise, Keegan and Brooking, beans and toast–Squeeze's songwriting duopoly of Chris Difford (words) and Glen Tilbrook (music) were seemingly conjoined by God to fulfil a divine purpose for mankind. In this case, it was to provide amiably clever-clever popular music which struck the hearts, tickled the ribs, moistened the eyes and tapped the feet of both the bloke down the pub and the lady washing the dishes at home (hey, this was the late 1970s and early 1980s remember). Difford and Tilbrook were (and–although conspicuously absent from the airwaves these days–remain) indecently adept at narrating a good domestic yarn over a suitably pithy couplet.

It would be true to say that the working-class soap-operetta of "Up the Junction", Paul Carrack's candid tale of tormented infidelity on "Tempted" and even–thanks to the latter-day culture of laddishness–the comic-strip "Cool for Cats" remain unwrinkled by the passing of time. But so does everything else here. Good pop music, after all, doesn't have a sell-by-date.

The second CD focuses on that extinct concept "the B side" and is home not only to many more songs which could have been "A sides" for anyone else but also to all manner of lunchbreak lunacy. "Squabs on Forty Fab" brilliantly parodied the then (1981) fashionable medley single (as popularised by the likes of Stars on 45 and Hooked on Classics) by stitching together several Squeeze hit songs over a disco beat. "Trust" was a Burundi beat pastiche of Adam and the Ants. "Suites from Five Strangers" was a collage of madcap musical sketches from each individual band member. And so on. They could be fools for a day but, more often than not, they were kings. –Kevin Maidment

Tracklist
1.01 Take Me I'm Yours
1.02 Goodbye Girl
1.03 Cool For Cats
1.04 Up The Junction
1.05 Slap & Tickle
1.06 Another Nail In My Heart
1.07 Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)
1.08 Is That Love
1.09 Tempted
1.10 Black Coffee In Bed
1.11 Annie Get Your Gun
1.12 Labelled With Love
1.13 Last Time Forever
1.14 Hourglass
1.15 Some Fantastic Place
1.16 Third Rail
1.17 This Summer
1.18 Electric Trains
1.19 Heaven Knows
1.20 Domino
2.01 Suites From Five Strangers
2.02 Squabs on Forty Fab
2.03 Model
2.04 Spanish Guitar
2.05 Elephant Girl
2.06 Trust
2.07 Yap, Yap, Yap
2.08 The Fortnight Saga
2.09 Wedding Bells
2.10 What the Butler Saw
2.11 Going Crazy
2.12 Introvert
2.13 Who's That
2.14 Vanity Fair
2.15 Christmas Day
2.16 Maidstone
2.17 Discipline
2.18 Periscope
2.19 All's Well