After the world shrugged at The Knowledge in 2017, someone told Tilbrook: 'Nobody is interested in a Squeeze record. What matters is Squeeze's story.' That stayed with me, he says. So not only does Trixies contain a story—it's a concept-album-cum-musical about a fictional nightclub—but there's also a great tale around the album. It was written when Difford and Tilbrook were teenagers in 1974 but left unrecorded because they couldn't properly play the songs they had written.
There are also interludes and phone recordings littered throughout that posit God Save the Gun as the most indulgent of pursuits: the concept album. Shelton has always used rehabilitation and redemption as primary muses, considering whether the carceral or 12-step versions can truly offer any lasting change. In the past, he's done so as an invested outsider, writing about his brother's incarceration and his experience as an auditor at AA meetings.
