“THE thing about life is it just goes very quickly,” muses Chris Difford over the band’s 35-year long success.

“When you’re a kid you kind of think summer’s going to last forever and it doesn’t and when you’re older it’s just difficult to keep up with it all. You wake up and the next minute you’re going back to bed!”

However it is evident that Chris is doing far more than waking and sleeping at the moment. Along with fellow songwriter Glenn Tilbrook the pair have headed Squeeze for the best part of four decades and recently premiered a new set of songs, their first in 14 years to American audiences.

“I think the new songs are going down really well,” says Chris who is now looking forward to performing them toUK audiences. Fans will get the chance to hear the songs which include a newtrack entitled Tommy when the band’s Pop Up Shop tour comes to Cardiff’s St David’s Hall later this month.

“The great thing is we’re going to come out and play not just our hits, but also newsongs. That’s something to look forward to if you’re a punter and you’ve bought the ticket,” continues Chris, “Our audiences aremature enough to understand that we need to play new stuff.”

I ask Chris about the early days of the band and if it was true they got their name froman albumby the legendary Velvet Underground. “It sadly was a Velvet Underground record,” replies Chris with a hint of hilarity. “But one of the duffer ones.Wenicked the title and here we are with it all these years later!”

With a chart dominated by the onslaught of punk and disco, Squeeze were one of the more accessible powerpop bands to crack the charts in the late 70s. On the back of hits such as Up the Junction and Cool for Cats, music critics of the era heralded both Difford and Tilbrook as the newLennon and McCartney.

“Well it’s a lovely accolade but what do they mean?” says Chris when I mention this to him. “I think we’re just two people who write songs.We enjoy the success that we’ve had and were very proud of the songs that we’ve written. We’re not at all fazed by the Lennon and McCartney approach. It doesn’t mean anything to us.”

Chris is equally dismissive about the band’s chart success: “Success does strike you as been a bit odd when it happens.

It’s all you ever wanted. You start off striving for success and when it happens your miffed by it all. I certainly don’t feel any of that success anymore. That was all part of the past and part of a different person.”

Chris finds more happiness in continuing to write and perform citing the band’s 1993 album Some Fantastic Place as a big turning point. “It was very emotional and we’d written this song which had a huge amount of emotion attached to it and our audiences definitely like that sort of thing.”

I ask Chris about the future of Squeeze, but he states that the band are concentrating on the tour for the moment, “We don’t have any plans which is typical of Squeeze,” he says. “We just hop from one stone onto the next and hope we don’t slip off into the stream!”

●Squeeze play St David’s Hall, Cardiff on Monday, November 26. Call Box Office 029 2087 8444 for ticket availability.