Squeeze – 5 October 2015 – live at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

Squeeze – 5 October 2015 – live at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

“Squeeze, the enduring British pop act whose songs have tenderly and wittily chronicled life and love stretching across four decades, are to play an extensive UK tour in the autumn – their first, as a band, for three years.

As well as a vast catalogue including hits such as [[Cool For Cats]], [[Up The Junction]] and [[Tempted]], it will include songs from forthcoming album From The Cradle To The Grave, which marks their first collection of new tracks since 1998.

Squeeze have long been a captivating live act with an array of chart hits – which also includes the likes of Take Me I’m Yours, Slap And Tickle and Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) – but for this tour there is a further treat with new tracks which will appear on From The Cradle To The Grave.

Support on the tour will come from poet and punk godfather Dr John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford.”

Hourglass
Annie Get Your Gun
Is that love
Another Nail In My HEart
Electric Trains
Only Fifteen
Beautiful Game
Some Fantastic Place
The Truth
Nirvana
Elephant Ride
Everything
Labelled with Love
Slap & Tickle
Black Coffee In Bed
Goodbye Girl
Open
Cradle To The Grave
Harper Valley PTA
I Don’t Wanna Grow Up
Tempted
Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)
Up The Junction

Snap, Crackle & Pop
Happy Days
Cool For Cats
Take Me I’m Yours

Here’s the review by Marc Waddington:

A gig that felt less like a celebration of the classics and more a dutiful slog to flog a new album

“Growing up I always used to wonder why place names in the UK sounded so uninspired and uninspiring compared to their American counterparts.

You can understand people writing songs with titles like ‘Ventura Highway’ or ‘Route 66’, less so ‘Edge Lane’ or ‘M53’.

So when I discovered Squeeze, it was a breath of fresh air breathed into the names of places in the UK. Here were songs that namechecked places like Clapham and Camber Sands – where I’d actually been.

Squeeze were masters of melodies of the mundane, singing songs about ordinary life, its trivial trials and heartbreaking monotony. And at last night’s eagerly anticipated gig at the Phil, they reaffirmed their supremacy in the genre they pioneered – albeit made to work for it.

After an opening set by performance poet John Cooper Clarke – himself a trailblazer for the poetry of the intertia of ordinary life through odes like Chicken Town – Squeeze got down to the business of honest musical graft equipped with a warehouse’s worth of instruments spread across the stage that would put any supergroup to shame, with more guitars on the stage than in Rushworths window.

Opening up with Hourglass, all seemed to be going fine, but after Is That Love? it all seemed to go wrong.

They lost audience after Glen Tilbrook walked off in a strop over some sound issue which seemed to be affecting the live recording for the DVD. After that it took a while to get the crowd back.

If it wasn’t for [[Labelled With Love]], Slap and Tickle and [[Black Coffee In Bed]], the audience might have been lost completely. But even still, there was something sadly flat about the whole thing, as flat as – reunion aside – Tilbrook and Chris Difford’s relationship.

Up The Junction, Tempted and Cool For Cats certainly won the crowd back, and by the end all was largely forgiven.

The last time I saw Squeeze at the Phil, it turned out to be one of my all time favourite gigs. And even thought the set list this time was largely composed of the old favorites, this gig felt less like a celebration of the classics and more a dutiful slog to flog a new album.

The audience were theirs on a plate, and take them Squeeze did, but dreams weren’t made of this.”

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/music/review-squeeze-liverpool-philharmonic-hall-10203806#ICID=sharebar_twitter

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