Squeeze have just dropped the sec­ond track from upcom­ing album Trix­ies (6th March 2026). Rather than pre­sent­ing us with a set of new songs, Chris Dif­ford and Glenn Tilbrook have wound back the years, dust­ing off a cas­sette of their ear­li­est mate­r­i­al – a con­cept album they wrote and record­ed when Glenn was just 16 and Chris 19.

Resus­ci­tat­ing mate­r­i­al from their for­ma­tive years was­n’t too oner­ous a task, part­ly due to their bass play­er Owen Bid­dle tak­ing on the task of pro­duc­ing the album – and under­stand­ing exact­ly what would work to its best advan­tage. Glenn and Chris felt the songs were as strong as any­thing they write today and Glenn described these tracks as some of their most opti­mistic. Guid­ed by Owen’s atten­tive pro­duc­tion, the songs have remained faith­ful melod­i­cal­ly and har­mon­i­cal­ly to their orig­i­nal.

When the duo wrote Trix­ies in 1974, they were deeply influ­enced by both musi­cal the­atre and the colour­ful Pro­hi­bi­tion-era tales by Damon Run­y­on, giv­ing them inspi­ra­tion, lyrics-wise, to set this con­cept album in a fic­tion­al night­club called Trixies.

At a press Q&A last week, host­ed by Pete Paphides at BMG’s new Lon­don offices, the first few tracks were unveiled. They were played through a high-spec sound sys­tem with a Chord amp, which was so strik­ing that I was momen­tar­i­ly dis­tract­ed by the sound qual­i­ty. The songs we heard car­ried the unmis­tak­able sig­na­ture of Squeeze in their ear­ly days, shot through with a vibran­cy and sense of drama.

The sec­ond track was a gen­tle, acoustic-led piece that echoed the warmth of Some Fan­tas­tic Place, while the third num­ber exud­ed a youth­ful urgency and ener­gy. The lyrics describe some­one “like a baby in the cra­dle” and men­tion “her man­ners at the table,” reveal­ing that even at a ten­der age, Chris was already writ­ing with sur­pris­ing matu­ri­ty and a famil­iar sharp, some­times unflinch­ing eye for detail.

The fourth track, The Place We Call Mars, clear­ly reflects a Bowie influ­ence. For the first 30 sec­onds or so, it draws on his style in a gen­er­al way before shift­ing into the unmis­tak­able swag­ger of All the Young Dudes.

Trix­ies is more than a col­lec­tion of ear­ly tracks, it’s a clev­er­ly con­struct­ed con­cept album with all the dra­ma and wit you expect from Squeeze. You can hear the ideas and crafts­man­ship that would shape the band’s future work.

Trix­ies Track­list­ing
What More Can I Say
You Get The Feel­ing
The Place We Call Mars
Hell On Earth
The Dancer
Good Rid­dance
Don’t Go Out In the Dark
Why Don’t You
Any­thing But Me
It’s Over
The Jaguars
Trix­ies Part One
Trix­ies Part Two

Trix­ies is released on March 6^th 2026 via BMG. Pre-order HERE
www.squeezeofficial.com for more information