Squeeze Go Back To The Beginning On 'Trixies'
- Josh Kitchen
- 37 minutes ago
- 11 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / March 11, 2026
“Trixies was our gold bar that we found in a rubbish tip,” Squeeze founding member Glenn Tilbrook told me, rediscovering his and fellow Squeeze founding member Chris Difford’s first songwriting venture together — the rock opera Trixies. In it, each song tells a different story set in a fictional, but not too distantly recognizable nightclub — one that could exist in any big city, with rainy puddles reflecting neon signs and lights glowing from the buildings above.
Written when Tilbrook was only 16 and Difford 19, the pair decided to put Trixies aside as something they just weren’t musically ready to take on, Tilbrook telling me, “We were way ahead as writers than we were as singers or musicians, or Squeeze as a band. We weren’t capable of representing what we had.”
Now though, with 50 years of experience under their belts as one of the most revered songwriting duos since Lennon and McCartney, Squeeze has returned to Trixies. Squeeze — the power pop, new wave, punk rock, or whatever genre you’d like to ascribe them (all every bit as correct as the other) — are the band behind iconic hits like “Up the Junction,” “Tempted,” “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell),” and “Cool for Cats,” and on Trixies they prove they were always destined for pop music greatness.
Fans of the band will find much to enjoy on Trixies. “Don’t Go Out in the Dark” reminds of the best of Tilbrook’s epic vocal ballads, “Hell on Earth” would have felt at home on 1980’s Argybargy, and the title tracks — of which there is a Part One and Part Two — are as cool as the coolest of Squeeze’s cats.
With music as visual as it is rich musically, the band is taking the album on the road as if they’re Trixies’ house band, clad in matching tailored suits and jazz spats. They’ll also make a headlining appearance at the Hollywood Bowl in September alongside The English Beat and Adam Ant.
I caught up with Glenn Tilbrook to talk about why now was the time for Trixies to finally open its doors, Squeeze’s legacy as one of the most beloved bands of their era, and finding inspiration from Radiohead and Doechii.
You and Chris [Difford] wrote this album when you were very young. You were 16. Chris was 19. Talk to me about your bandmate and producer on this, Owen Biddle, and his involvement in making this record come to life. And why now?
Now? Because I think we've always looked back on Trixies as being something special. I mean, we thought it was at the time, but then nothing happened around it, and that went on for a few years of nothing really happening with us. So as happens, times change, and then by the time we made a record there was punk and all that stuff. So, you know, coming back to the songs, Owen was really great. We sat down and played through the songs, and had to relearn most of them. To get inside them and realize now, with all the experience that I've had, fucking hell, these are some really good songs. We thought back then they were good, but they're better than we thought they were. And that doesn’t happen. Well, that never happens. So it’s a bit like, you know those people—detectorists—who go searching looking for that one find. Trixies was our gold bar that we found in a rubbish tip. And to have the opportunity to represent ourselves as writers - because the important thing is we were way ahead as writers than we were as singers or musicians, or Squeeze as a band. We weren’t capable of representing what we had. The only way we could have done an album like Trixies in 1974 and have it be anywhere close to as good as it is now is if you got session guys in and we just sang over it. You know, really, that’s the truth.
You’ve spent a long time becoming the musicians you needed to be to put Trixies out. And I think when people hear it, they’re going to hear a record by a band they’ve come to know and love. If you love Squeeze, this is familiar, but it’s exciting because the material itself is also brand new to the listener. Then you have the album cover—you can kind of immediately imagine what you’re going to get into when you see the it, which is so fun for people who love going to a record shop and just go cover diving. And in your live show right now, you’re even wearing these incredible, very well-tailored suits. Talk to me about the visual aspect of all of this.
You know, I think it was really important for it to be visually representative of how Trixies feels. The image that I started out with—is a short film by William Klein, shot in 1958 with the bright lights on Broadway, and it’s got that wonderful dreamy ’50s color. And it really is just shots of Manhattan in the rain. And there was one particular sequence that was just reflections in puddles. I thought—that’s what Trixies is. It’s not a specific thing. It’s a feeling you get from looking at somewhere where something’s happening without it being, “Oh, there’s a guy going in there.” You don’t need the detail if it’s relevant. It’s the feeling of it.
It’s happening inside of Trixies when you see the album cover. and in the alleys next to it.
Yes! So musically and lyrically we’ve conveyed it. And what’s interesting about going back to it is that it’s not a story that goes from A to B to C to D. It’s lots of little snapshots of stuff, and there’s plenty of information that’s not there for the listener to fill in in their minds. It’s like listening to a radio play or something, in a way, because you feel like—I think you feel like—you’re there. That’s how it feels to me. And, you know, I wrote the music to it. It feels like we succeeded in doing something that is more than the sum of its parts.
I think what’s going to be rewarding about it—and I know you’ve mentioned this—is wanting to perform it in full. When you listen to this record, it feels very thematic. It opens and closes. The way it opens reminded me a lot of a Brian Wilson record, that kind of invitational sound. It’s like a welcome in. And by the time you get to the end, it’s like you’ve had a hell of a night - a night of a lifetime.
Yeah. And I have to say—no, I don’t have to say—I want to say that Owen Biddle played such a big part in that because he sequenced the record. We were tearing our hair out trying to think what order everything should go in, and we were stuck on the idea of "Trixies, Pt.1" and "Trixies, Pt. 2" always being the opener. That was always in our minds. But actually by the time we recorded it, that didn’t sound like a good opener at all. But that’s the opener we were stuck on. And Owen said, “Well, how about this?” And then it was like seeing magic. It’s like, oh, of course, that’s it. So it’s a puzzle. It kept revealing itself, and it revealed itself to Owen. He’s so brilliant at teasing out things and his belief in us and what we’re doing and being a part of it too.
It seems like you needed somebody on the outside, a fan and an admirer and a now contemporary to kind of really pull that out.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s just amazing. The band has evolved now, and we keep expanding, and our vocal capabilities are so much stronger now. All the backing vocals that we’re doing now—we can do those live. It’s such an important part of everything we’re doing, and previously Squeeze couldn’t do that. And it feels like it’s liberating. So we can be—at last—we can turn into Fleetwood Mac!
You play guitar, you sing leads on many of Squeeze’s most incredible songs, and you’ve been in a band for all this time now. Do you think of yourself more as a guitarist who sings or a singer who plays guitar?
I don’t really think of myself as either of those. I think of myself as a writer who sings and plays. That’s really it. Although I should say I’m probably more of a guitarist than a singer, but I’m not a brilliant guitarist. What I am good at is constructing things. I think I was fortunate to realize early on that playing a blues solo probably wouldn’t cut it for me. If I play guitar, I’m essentially a blues guitarist, but that’s not that interesting for me. So if I constructed things, and I started constructing things early on—I saw this program at school where 10cc were recording “The Dean and I,” and they said they did a guitar part and then added a harmony part. I thought, oh, you can do that? So after that I started constructing harmony parts, even though I couldn’t play them or record them yet. Using the studio became a big part of how I played guitar. Because I thought, like songs, the guitar parts better be there to stay. I’m not going to improvise. I’ll learn a great solo and that will be it. So that’s actually still the way I play now. I might have little outbreaks of improvising, but not much.
I love that. It’s interesting hearing you talk about constructing things, because it’s hard to imagine a song like “Up the Junction” working without a chorus if you worked that way.
Yeah, exactly. “Up the Junction” was musically me reading the lyric and thinking, fucking hell, that’s so good, I better be like Bob Dylan here. So the band just played it straight, like The Band. And when we recorded it that’s what I said to everyone—just play it like The Band, nothing too showy. Then the record company turned it down and said it needed a hook or something else. So we added the bit that wasn’t there. Without that it sounds like The Band, but with it it sounds like a pop song.
I love the new cover of Paul McCartney's, “Junior’s Farm” you guys are doing. Your version kills.
Oh, thank you. We only did that yesterday—was that only yesterday? Wow. The reason we settled on that is because we did it when it was new. Squeeze covered it in 1974. We played it at our second gig, I think. That might have been the only time we played it, but I love that song.
It’s kind of like “Up the Junction” in that way that every verse tells a piece of the story.
Yeah, and the way he tells it is quite—it's much more subversive than I thought it was.
Squeeze just announced a headlining show at the Hollywood Bowl in September with Adam Ant and The English Beat. Talk to me about playing Los Angeles.
Hey! —come on. It’s really exciting. I’m very excited about the whole bill. And what’s great about Squeeze now is that I really think we’re better than we’ve ever been at any point in our career. I think that to myself, and then I look at the reaction we’re getting from audiences, and that tells me also that we’re getting the best reaction ever. That’s because we’re paying attention. We’ve trimmed away all the unwanted fat and added extra bits of loveliness, and it just feels great.
The great thing about Squeeze and your songs, is you still have that sound that is relevant today - it's this authentic sound that people are still gravitating towards, especially with a lot of modern alternative and pop music. So with an album like Trixies, it has so many sounds that were never not relevant.
You know, one of my worst things is seeing online how we had a little period of having hits and being in the sunshine, and then far longer we were ignored as for as where critics were concerned. But what we did, was actually we just went our own way. Of course we wanted to be successful, but it didn’t really happen too much to us. The only time we really chased success was right before we split up again, and that was soul-destroying. We rewrote songs and tried to make hits. It wasn’t successful anyway. So you end up with something you don’t like and no one else does either. You might as well end up with stuff that you like. Since that point, we never wanted to back to the other way of making records. In other words, being A&R'ed and all that stuff - fuck that.
What would you tell your 1974 self making this record if you knew what you know now?
It’ll all be alright - don't worry. But I don't think I did worry though! I think I was so stupid that I always thought everything would turn out all right - and luckily it did.
Squeeze is a band that makes people very happy. you probably know that, But I think that's very needed now when times are tough for a lot of people.
Yeah - I know that. That’s a really nice thing to say. Thank you.
I’m excited for people to hear this record live - have you played any of the tracks in concert yet?
We’ve only played one other track live so far—“Hell on Earth.” We’re about to start rehearsing and running the whole record and finding out how that works. But I think it’s going to be really good, and I think we can sonically make it work. And, you know, the other big thing that’s happened to us—and I think it’s really important to say this—is that I saw Radiohead at Coachella in 2012 and loved what they did. There were a few things happening that I couldn’t see anyone doing, and they were using bits of track. I thought, oh yeah, this doesn’t mean if you use track that you’re miming. It actually means you’re playing along with some other little things that can add atmosphere and detail. I’ve been completely hooked on that. And I think we use track really well, because we’re always playing and always doing all the things that are important, but you can have little sonic details you could never play live. That’s moved alongside everything else.
And I saw Doechii playing at Glastonbury Festival last year was fucking great. It was all track and dancing, and she was live. I thought, oh my God, this is what life is as well as that and that. You know, we’re not stuck in the 1960s. We’re here now, and let’s be now, not then.
And what I love about live music is that you're pulling something out of nothing. It wasn’t there — it’s not there until you get there. So yeah, no matter how you do it, as long as you're true to yourself creatively and artistically. I mean, you wrote the damn tracks you're using — use them how you want.
And I mean, eventually, of course, we won’t be playing at all.
There's always a market for hologram concerts.
Well, I’ve seen the ABBA show here twice, and I saw the U2 show in the Sphere. You can really see how that stuff is going to be the future — not just for music, but for anything, any creative endeavor. I thought this is just the beginning. When people really get hold of this technology and start doing things with it, it’s already mind-blowing, but it’s going to be even more so. It’s so immersive, and you’ll never get that at home — or anywhere else.
And with that - please buy Squeeze tickets for your Live entertainment, folks!
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