British rock veterans Squeeze brought their celebrated songwriting partnership to Atlanta’s historic Fox Theatre on Saturday night as part of their Tried, Tested and Trixies Tour, with special guests Adam Ant and Haircut 100. Few venues could provide a more fitting backdrop for a band whose music has endured across generations than the “Fabulous Fox,” where the evening’s blend of classic British pop, new wave and sharp observational songwriting would unfold beneath the theatre’s spectacular Moorish-inspired architecture. Opened in 1929, the Fox surrounds its audience with soaring domes, ornate detailing, minarets and gold-leaf accents, creating an atmosphere that feels as much like a cinematic palace as a concert hall. With Squeeze marking 50 years together and showcasing material from their newly realized Trixies album alongside the hits and deep cuts that established their legacy, the night promised to pair one of Britain’s most enduring songbooks with one of Atlanta’s most visually remarkable stages.
Opening the evening at 7:00 p.m., Haircut 100 brought a distinctly British pop sensibility to a bill steeped in the colorful sounds of the early new-wave era. The band’s presence offered an intriguing appetizer for what would become a night celebrating some of the United Kingdom’s most distinctive musical exports, with Haircut 100’s polished blend of pop hooks, rhythmic sophistication and jazz-funk touches providing a natural bridge between the evening’s opening slot and the headlining sounds of Squeeze. Best known for their enduring early 1980’s hits in “Love Plus One” and “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl),” Haircut 100 occupy a particularly distinctive corner of the era’s musical landscape, favoring buoyant melodies and intricate arrangements over the harder-edged post-punk aesthetic associated with many of their contemporaries.
Rather than serving merely as a nostalgic prelude, the group’s appearance underscored just how much musical territory existed within Britain’s early-’80s pop explosion and why Haircut 100 have retained a devoted following decades after their initial run. Their placement alongside Adam Ant and Squeeze made this more than a conventional opening slot; it positioned the band as an essential piece of a broader retrospective on an era when adventurous arrangements, sharp songwriting and unabashedly melodic pop could coexist comfortably. For Atlanta concertgoers arriving early, Haircut 100 provided a fitting 6-song first chapter to an evening built around enduring British songwriting and the unmistakable character of a bygone musical era.
Haircut 100 (also Haircut One Hundred)
Nick Heyward — Lead vocals, guitar
Les Nemes — Bass
Graham Jones — Guitar
Blair Cunningham — Drums
Setlist:
1.) Someone
2.) Nobody’s Fool
3.) Kingsize (You’re My Little Steam Whistle)
4.) Fantastic Day
5.) Love Plus One
6.) Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)
Taking the stage just past 7:45 p.m. between Haircut 100 and headliners Squeeze, 71-year-old Adam Ant was positioned to inject a more theatrical and commanding strain of British new wave into an already nostalgia-rich evening. Few artists from the early MTV era carried as distinctive a visual and musical identity as Ant, whose musical catalog with Adam and the Ants helped turn post-punk eccentricity into something flamboyant, rhythmic and unapologetically pop-minded. Hearing hit staples such as “Antmusic,” “Goody Two Shoes,” and “Stand and Deliver” was a treat, but I was a little disappointed that 1983’s “Strip” was excluded from the evening’s rundown. As the second act of the night, Ant also had the advantage of walking into an audience already primed for the era, allowing his distinctive brand of theatrical rock to shift the evening from Haircut 100’s polished pop into something considerably more swaggering.
Ant’s placement on the bill also served as an important reminder that the British musical explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s was never a single sound. Ant represented the more flamboyant, genre-defying side of the movement, blending punk attitude, glam-inspired presentation and infectious pop craftsmanship into a persona that became inseparable from his music. With Squeeze still waiting in the wings, Ant’s performance functioned as more than a nostalgic detour; it helped establish the evening’s broader celebration of British songwriting and performance while giving Atlanta fans an opportunity to revisit one of the period’s most unmistakable musical personalities.
Adam Ant (Band)
Adam Ant — Lead vocals
Will Crewdson — Lead guitar
Jola (Jolanta Guzik) — Drums
Joe Holweger — Bass
Adam-Paul Leach — Guitar
Setlist:
1.) Dog Eat Dog (Adam and the Ants song)
2.) Vive le Rock
3.) Friend or Foe
4.) Cartrouble (Adam and the Ants song)
5.) Zerox (Adam and the Ants song)
6.) Prince Charming (Adam and the Ants song)
7.) Desperate but Not Serious
8.) Kings of the Wild Frontier (Adam and the Ants song)
9.) Antmusic (Adam and the Ants song)
10.) Goody Two Shoes
11.) Stand and Deliver (Adam and the Ants song)
By the time Squeeze finally took the stage around 9:00 p.m., the evening had already traveled through two very different corners of Britain’s musical past. Yet the arrival of band founders Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook made clear why Squeeze have always occupied such a distinctive place within it. More than five decades after the songwriting partnership first began, the band approached its headlining slot with a catalog that could move effortlessly from clever pop craftsmanship to rootsy rock, from wry character studies to songs built for an entire room to sing along with. The current Tried, Tested and Trixies Tour also gave the Atlanta audience a chance to hear the band’s newest chapter, with Trixies marking Squeeze’s first album of original material in eight years. Inside the Fox’s lavish surroundings, tunes such as “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell),” “Up the Junction” and “Black Coffee in Bed” eloquently carried the weight of Squeeze’s history, while newer material demonstrated that Difford and Tilbrook remain interested in adding fresh dimensions to a songbook already filled with timeless classics.
The real strength of Squeeze’s performance was the way the past and present existed side by side without competing for attention. “Another Nail in My Heart,” “Cool for Cats,” “Tempted” and “Take Me I’m Yours” remain instantly recognizable touchstones, but the band’s longevity has never depended solely on replaying its greatest hits. Instead, Squeeze have built a career on sharply observed songwriting, sophisticated arrangements and an ability to make deceptively intricate pop-rock sound completely natural in a live setting. That combination provided the perfect conclusion to a bill that showcased three distinct interpretations of British musical ingenuity. With Trixies adding another chapter to a story that began more than 50 years ago, Squeeze demonstrated why their music has proved remarkably resistant to nostalgia: these aren’t simply songs being preserved from another era, but compositions that continue to breathe, evolve and connect with audiences well beyond the moment in which they were written.
Squeeze’s Tried, Tested and Trixies Tour will wrap up its U.S. dates on Sunday, September 27, at the Masonic Temple Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.
Squeeze
Glenn Tilbrook — Lead guitar, keyboards, vocals
Chris Difford — Rhythm guitar, vocals
Stephen Large — Keyboards, backing vocals
Simon Hanson — Drums, percussion, backing vocals
Steve Smith — Percussion, rhythm guitar, vocals
Melvin Duffy — Pedal and lap steel guitars, dulcimer
Owen Biddle — Bass, backing vocals
Danica Dora — Backing vocals, keyboards
Leon Tilbrook — Guitar, backing vocals
Setlist:
1.) Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)
2.) Up the Junction
3.) Another Nail in My Heart
4.) Is It Love
Trixies
5.) What More Can I Say
6.) You Get the Feeling
7.) The Place We Call Mars
8.) Hell on Earth
9.) The Dancer
10.) Good Riddance
11.) Don’t Go Out in the Dark
12.) Why Don’t You
13.) Anything but Me
14.) It’s Over
15.) The Jaguars
16.) Trixies, Pt. 1
17.) Trixies, Pt. 2
18.) Hourglass
19.) Black Coffee in Bed
20.) Third Rail
21.) Goodbye Girl
22.) Slap & Tickle
23.) Cool for Cats
24.) Tempted
25.) Take Me I’m Yours
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Elliott is a music photographer covering shows in Atlanta, Georgia, and the surrounding area. The highlight of his photography career was back in the early ’90s, when he sold Neil Diamond the rights to his negatives from a show and then purchased a set of tires for his 1979 280ZX during college with the money.