Stereo Review, September 1980
RECORDING OF SPECIAL MERIT
Performance: Excellent Recording: Good 

I'm a sucker for off-the-wall British humor, so I was crazy about Squeeze's last album, "Cool for Cats". Their new "Argybargy" is also very funny, but the humor is somewhat restrained-well, maybe "channeled" is a better word. This time out they sound as if they're serious, as though they said to one another: "Look, mates, it's been a great lark but we've got to shape up and sell some record." The two best songs deal with courtship. Separate Beds is a tale of prospective inlaws; neither mother likes her child's intended, but the fathers do. Vicky Verky is a compact story of the hard times of a lowerclass teenage couple. What makes it topnotch is the economy of the lyrics-the whole story is told very quickly but with precise descriptions-and a full-speed- ahead performance that is bona fide rock-and-roll. This stuff may remind you of the Kinks in the late Sixties, and I don't think it's stretching the comparison to say that as musical satirists these guys are the Kinks children. And they're funnier. J.V.