Roundly regarded as
Squeeze's grand masterpiece, in its planned incarnation
East Side Story was going to be much grander: it was designed as a double-album with each side produced by a different musician, all a forefather of a different aspect of
Squeeze.
Dave Edmunds and his
Rockpile cohort
Nick Lowe were both contracted, as was
Lowe's main producing success story
Elvis Costello, and then
Paul McCartney was slated for a side, but as the sessions started all but
Elvis and
Edmunds pulled out, with
Dave only contributing one track.
Costello was enough to make a big, big difference, helping to highlight a band in flux.
Jools Holland left the group after
Argybargy, taking with him a penchant for boogie-woogie novelty tunes. His replacement was
Paul Carrack, veteran of pub rockers
Ace who gave
Squeeze another lead singer with true commercial potential -- something that
Costello exploited by having
Carrack sing lead for the brilliant piece of blue-eyed soul, "Tempted" (
Costello and Glenn Tilbrook sneak in for the second verse). "Tempted" was a misleading hit -- at least it was a hit in America, where it turned into a '80s standard -- in that it suggested
Carrack was a larger presence in the band than he really was, yet it also suggested the richness of
East Side Story, and in how the band's music deepened and found a sympathetic producer in
Costello. Far from reprising his skeletal, nervy production for
The Specials,
Costello smoothes out the lingering rough edges in the band, giving them a hint of gloss that has more to do with its new wave era than commercial considerations. One thing that is missing is the frenzied beat that had been
Squeeze's signature throughout their first three albums: despite the echoey rockabilly of "Messed Around" -- if you didn't check the credits, you'd be sure this is
Edmunds' production, but he was responsible for tightening up the almost ideal opener "In Quintessence," which strangely enough sounds like
Costello's 1981 album,
Trust (it really was an incestuous scene) -- this isn't a rock & roll album, it's a pop album through and through, from its sounds to its songs. It's bright, colorful, immediate even when things get ambitious, as they do on the dense, grandly psychedelic "F-Hole," which is cleverly deflated -- musically and lyrically -- by its juxtaposition with "Labelled with Love," a lazy country-rock stroll that doesn't seem out of place among the rest of the clever, immaculately constructed pop songs. Instead, it acts as further proof that
Difford and Tilbrook could write and play almost anything at this point: they perfected their barbed, bouncy pop -- best heard on the single "Is That Love," but also "Someone Else's Heart" and terrific, percolating "Piccadilly" -- but they also slowed down to a hazy crawl on "There's No Tomorrow," turned intimate and sensitive on the jangly "Woman's World," and crafted the remarkably fragile, Baroque "Vanity Fair." All this variety gave
East Side Story the feel of the double-album it was originally intended to be and it stands as
Squeeze's tour de force, the best pop band of their time stretching every one of its muscles. [The 1998 U.K. reissue contained two bonus tracks: "The Axe Has Now Fallen," whose bright beat can't mask its bitterness, and a pretty good cover of the pop-soul standard "Looking for a Love"]. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine