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Un-Squeezed
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If Neil Finn, Aimee Mann, and Elvis Costello can all maintain their critics’-darling status a good 10 years out of their prime, then there has to be a place in pop for a modest master like Glenn Tilbrook. Since he’s still got the same melodic knack, boyish looks, and classic pop voice he had in his Squeeze days, you’d think that VH1, Adult Contemporary radio stations, or at least more than the 100 odd diehards who showed up to see him at the Paradise a week ago Thursday would be drooling over him. The show served notice that Tilbrook is out of his recent career slump, at least on the artistic front. After Squeeze’s last great album (1993’s Some Fantastic Place, on A&M) sank without trace, the band went through a long and depressing decline. For their final tour, in 2000, even lyricist/co-founder Chris Difford was absent. Tilbrook then made his first solo album (the following year’s The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook, on W.A.R.) using loops and samples, not exactly the format that suits him best. He spent the next few years doing enjoyable if predictable solo acoustic tours. So it was a pleasure to find him fronting a very Squeeze-like band (a young combo he’s dubbed the Fluffers) at the Paradise. The group entered the stage by way of the audience and kicked into the Squeeze classic "Pulling Mussels from a Shell" — a marker for the start of summer if there ever was one. Between songs from Tilbrook’s new Transatlantic Ping Pong (on his own Quixotic label), they proved more at home with Squeeze’s greatest hits than the last couple of editions of that band were. The connection proved a mixed blessing, however. Squeeze tended to play it safe with their set lists, doing the same hits on every tour and seldom exploring their catalogue. At the Paradise, Tilbrook stuck mainly with those hits ("Tempted," "Take Me I’m Yours," "Black Coffee in Bed" and the slightly less obvious "Is That Love"), which means that he stayed mainly in the early ’80s ("Here’s one from the days of skinny ties," he announced before "Another Nail in My Heart"), even though he was playing for the same fans who’ve kept up with all the albums since then. The night’s real strength was a chunk of the new album, his best since Some Fantastic Place. The cheeky "Hot Shaved Asian Teens" was right up Squeeze’s alley, but the new ballad "Domestic Distortion" showed how well Tilbrook has pulled off becoming his own lyricist. It’s about reuniting with a loved one, but the last verse reveals that it’s the singer’s estranged daughter. This is a heart tugger that he couldn’t have written in the skinny-tie days.
BY BRETT MILANO
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