“You Can’t Be Too Strong” is the kind of song you hear once and know you’ll never forget, and you definitely don’t know how to feel about that. It’s difficult to talk about Squeezing Out Sparks without first discussing the elephant in the room. It was 10 lean and sardonic songs performed with razor’s-edge menace over 35 minutes, which back-burnered Parker’s reputation as a traditionalist and situated him at the head of rock’s Angry Young Man club. Featuring a harder sound calculated to emphasize his connection to punk, the finished product seemingly succeeded by any conceivable metric. With the enthusiastic backing of a new label Arista and featuring the production of industry legend Jack Nitzsche, Parker’s fourth album, Squeezing Out Sparks, was a conscious attempt to consolidate his lofty critical reputation into a commensurate audience. If you had asked a knowledgeable fan or clued-in critic in 1979 whether Parker or Costello would have the more notable career over the long term, the wagering would have been 50-50 in either direction. He was endlessly compared to his ascendant contemporary Elvis Costello, with whom he shared an acidic wit and a simmering rage. Alongside his extraordinary backing band the Rumour, Parker was embedded in England’s pub rock scene, which set the template for British punk by stripping down and souping up the garage and folk rock of the ’60s-a functional bridge between the Faces and the Sex Pistols.
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