NEW Wave icons Squeeze have announced a date at the Pavilion theatre on October 13. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10am.

The enduring British pop act whose songs have tenderly and wittily chronicled life and love stretching across four decades, are to play an extensive UK tour in the autumn – their first, as a band, for three years.

As well as a vast catalogue including hits such as Cools For Cats, Up The Junction and Tempted, it will include songs from forthcoming album From The Cradle To The Grave, which marks their first collection of new tracks since 1998.

The group first formed in 1974, shortly after Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook had begun their songwriting partnership. By 1977 they had made their recording debut and enjoyed a string of hits which lasted until 1982, the maturity of their songs outliving their initial burst of chart activity on the back of New Wave.

Over the years there have been solo careers and occasional separations, but the Ivor Novello Award-winning songwriting duo Chris and Glenn got back together eight years ago to relaunch Squeeze.

Glenn says: “We split in 1998 after the release of Domino. Chris and I were not getting on so well, we needed a break and to follow our own paths for a bit. We slowly but surely came back together as people, and then reformed Squeeze in 2007. Originally, this was only planned as a short reunion, but things went so well, here we are eight years later. Four years ago we agreed that if we were to carry on, we really needed to work on new material.”

Chris says of their fresh songs: “We’ve grown up a lot in the last few years, musically. For the first five years back together, we were saying ‘this is where we came from’. Now, this is where we are. We still love and own our past, but as musicians we needed to grow.”

Support on the tour will come from poet and punk godfather Dr John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford. John shot to fame in the 1970s for his quickfire delivery of dry, biting and hilarious satirical verse, touring with the likes of The Clash and Sex Pistols. The tousled, raven-haired creator of (I Married A) Monster From Outer Space, Evidently Chickentown and Beasley Street has gone on to collaborate with Arctic Monkeys and been a panellist on BBC1’s Have I Got News For You.