Two special commemorative singles, issued as a special tribute to the passing of Allan Jones's bachelorhood. Both ooze melancholy and angst, both from artists licking their words from the unfamiliar experience of a critical panning of their albums, both seriously smitten with after-party blues and insecurity.
Squeeze's moroseness is shrouded in smoky jazz club atmospherics, a drawling bass-line barely keeping them upright until a bunch of strings gently escort them to the toilet. Odd choice for a single, but perfect for a Dean Martin cover.
Elvis typically attacks his own troubled hangover with rather more lust and spirit, the spry endurance of the Attractions refusing to let him wallow in self-pity the way Squeeze do. "Will you still love a man out of time?" he wails, and the heart-strings get a rare old thrashing.
It's a brilliant record, fully endorsed by the additional presence of a furious new version of "Town Crier" and the lightly poisonous wedding song "Imperial Bedroom."
By the way, Jonesy's dying words as a single man amounted to an agonised, unreserved retraction of his previous bitter condemnation of the Imperial Bedroom album. It was his last wish that I should inform you of this.
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