From the title, you might think Squeeze's latest album would be a work of wordy self-indulgence instead of the striking return to form it turns out to be. After all, Squeeze has always been just a little too smart for its own commercial – and even musical – good. On the band's 1985 reunion album, the lamentable Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti, Squeeze's tendency toward lyrical obscurity for obscurity's sake went completely unchecked, and the overly busy result was the least impressive effort in the lovable Brits' otherwise brilliant career.

Happily, the endlessly catchy Babylon and On is a giant step in the right direction. Musically, Squeeze hasn't sounded this straightforward and energetic since the glory days of Argybargy. Part of the reason for the band's new-found focus is the tight, driving work of the rhythm section, drummer Gilson Lavis and bassist Keith Wilkinson. As far as Squeeze albums go, Babylon and On is almost funky. But most of the credit for the record's success must go to the band's songwriting team, Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford (they were the Lennon and McCartney of the 1980s, remember?) for having come up with the commodity that Cosi Fan so sorely lacked – coherent, melodic, melt-in-your-mouth pop songs.

Produced by Tilbrook and Eric "E.T." Thorngren, Babylon and On shows Difford and Tilbrook once again using undying wit and a healthy portion of irony to grapple with matters domestic. "Hourglass," the album's first single, is an oddly inspiring ode to Sisyphean frustration ("I feel like I'm calling on a telephone/No one can hear the ringing/I feel like I'm running up a steep hill/No one can stop me from running"). "The Prisoner" is a tale of marital entrapment that benefits from the match of a propulsive Tilbrook melody with some of Difford's inspired wordplay ("He's helping her to see/How a marriage can be baked/Baked like a cake but without the file/The tool that she needs/To make her life worth while").

Not everything on the album works: the world doesn't really need another phone-number song ("853-5937"), and one cigarette song might suffice where Squeeze sees fit to include two ("Striking Matches," "Cigarette of a Single Man"). But overall, Babylon and On is an inspired, most welcome comeback. Singles – 45's and Under, their 1982 greatest-sorta-hits collection, seemed like the epitaph for the band, but Babylon and On suggests Squeeze is moving gracefully into the golden years of its pop life. (RS 513)

DAVID WILD