Squeeze prove why they belong alongside The Beatles and The Kinks, live at The Gov

Squeeze have been writing sharp, hook-laden pop since 1974, and the songwriting partnership of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook remains the beating heart of the band. Between 1978 and 1996 they landed 11 UK Top 40 singles, six of them cracking the Top 20, and tracks like 'Up the Junction', 'Tempted', 'Cool for Cats', 'Another Nail in My Heart' and 'Labelled with Love' have long since passed into the fabric of British pop, sitting comfortably alongside The Beatles and The Kinks in that regard.

The band arrive in Adelaide in April 2027 as part of the Tried, Tested and Trixies Tour, playing The Gov on Tuesday 20 April with doors at 7pm. It's a rare chance to see a genuinely storied outfit still touring on their own terms, and the timing isn't incidental. The tour doubles as a celebration of more than 50 years of Squeeze and a showcase for their new album, Trixies.

The touring lineup has evolved plenty over the decades, and this iteration features Glenn Tilbrook alongside Owen Biddle on bass, Steve Smith on percussion, Stephen Large on keys, Simon Hanson on drums, Leon Tilbrook on guitar and Danica Dora on backing vocals. It's a band built for the job, capable of doing justice to both the deep catalogue and whatever Trixies brings to the stage.

The Guardian has called their live shows "pop perfection," and it's not hard to see why that reputation has stuck. Few bands from Squeeze's generation still tour with this kind of consistency, let alone with new material in tow. Their fingerprints are all over the pop landscape that followed them, too, with artists from Lily Allen to The Killers pointing to Squeeze as a reference point.

For Adelaide audiences, this is a chance to hear those classics delivered by the men who wrote them, in a room as intimate as The Gov. Tickets are $95.75 plus booking fee, and given the band's track record for tight, witty, hook-filled sets, this one is worth getting in early for.