Sweets From A Stranger

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Squeeze’s fifth album, released a year after their blue-eyed soul tune “Tempted” became a crossover hit, finds the songwriting team of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook further exploring their R&B influences. The hit single “Black Coffee In Bed” is a worthy successor to “Tempted,” and though it’s built like a lost mid-’60s Temptations 45, there’s enough distinctive Squeeze-ness to the literary details of Difford’s lyrics and the slight wryness of Tilbrook’s vocal delivery that it escapes coming across as a straight pastiche. That’s not quite true of the Sinatra-style piano jazz ballad “When the Hangover Strikes,” but Tilbrook’s vocal performance is so committed and beautiful that it’s hardly an issue. The soulful vocal approach extends to songs that don’t present as R&B numbers. Tilbrook’s fiery vocal delivery on “Out of Touch” contrasts sharply with the song’s cold palette and tense, angst-inducing layers of synthetic rhythm. His passionate performance on the lovely, lightly psychedelic closer “The Elephant Ride” elevates the song by highlighting the sensuality in the lyrics about an illicit affair. The quasi-disco track “Stranger Than the Stranger on the Shore” seems a bit late on the draw in 1982, while the airy minimalist funk of “The Very First Dance” now sounds like they were ahead of the curve, anticipating a sound Prince would fully explore a couple years down the line.

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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