Squeeze: East Side Story (A&M)

CONSIDER. A band with decidedly bent pop bearings (and more than a light touch merseybeat croon-a-toon McCartneyatrics), associated with John Cale in the founding phase of punk (first EP: '77), loses its boogie-based pianist, takes on a keyboardist from the heyday of pub-rock and, as a new producer, the most brilliantly belligerent singer-songwriter of Britain's (ahem) new wave, proceeds to make an album that harkens back to the halcyon era of English studio experimentation: an LP that leans snugly alongside the likes of Odessey And Oracle (Zombies), Evolution (Hollies), Something Else By The Kinks, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (Small Faces) (the record even has fourteen songs, just like the Parlophone Revolver, and the moderately trippy ballad is called ‘There's No Tomorrow’ and there's a cousin to Ms. E. Rigby on ‘Vanity Fair’)...well, you get the idea. I hope.