Squeeze

Their previous album, East Side Story, remains the finest of their career. This one shows the strain of trying to top it while Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were experiencing a strained relationship with fame, foreign substances and each other. Still, it's hard to complain when you have a boatload of decent tunes and a couple of all-time classics -- the fantastic anthem "I've Returned," the wonderfully bittersweet "Black Coffee in Bed" and the oddly ignored "When the Hangover Strikes," a sophisticated supper-club ballad. Squeeze were set to explode in America -- and, of course, they broke up.

In a classic rock and roll success story, Tilbrook & Difford are getting laid more and enjoying it less. Not that enjoyment in the usual sense is the point--flesh is hardly their specialité. But the ever more disconcerting hookcraft signifies a "maturing" emotional grasp in which a scheduled album seems like as good a reason as any to think up nine new ways to leave your lover. (Grade - B+)