There's more than one confusing aspect to Repeat When Necessary - the 1979 album from Welsh singer and guitarist Dave Edmunds. First, the fact that this disc is from one of the Love Sculpture dudes, who were responsible for some bluesy, pysch touched moments, but has nothing to do with that music seems weird. Secondly, the album is on Led Zepplin's Swan Song imprint while the music doesn't seem even tangentially related to the soopa group's muzak. Next, is the fact that not only does the album look like a power pop disc, it features Nick Lowe on bass and begins with an Elvis Costello song seems to refute the fact that there isn't all to big a correlation between this disc and that movement.

Apart from all of those things, it's still a pretty good listen.

Edmunds began his career during the '60s with that aforementioned blues knock off group. As he exited the group, pursuing a solo career necessitated Edmunds to construct and utilize a studio in which he would record entire albums on his own. This stilted approach to creating music didn't yield too many enormous successes, but it did keep his name in rotation, which is as important as anything else for a musician. But during this time, it also seemed as if the biz changed drastically, shifting bar bands from down home locals to pseudo punkers with revved up distorted guitar chords angling for a shot at Top of the Pops. Edmunds would adapt, though, sorta.

That first track - the Elvis Costello cover - on which Edmunds cops some of the song writer's vocal swagger somehow ends up sounding as close to '80s pop as anything else on the album. The following track, perhaps the albums highlight, "Crawling from the Wreckage," a Graham Parker track and another reason to figure this disc for a power pop excursion, sounds something like a trucker recording a ballroom brawler.

The traditional rock backing of the song belies the chorus with its honky-tonk intonation and repetition ending in the endeavor again approximating some hillbillified Elvis Costello. Its guitar solo works to replicate a pedal steel - not to good effect, but effective. A slow rocker and more truck driving anthems close out the first side of this slab and hint at the rock tunes that the second side holds.

"Queen of Hearts" kicks off the second half of the disc and oddly finds Edmunds atop of a Roy Orbison related piece of music. It seems to suit him, but the production - and the addition of a few supplemental guitar chords after the fact - makes the song an odd addition to the album as a whole.

The entirety of the disc, though, seems to hold Edmunds in some sort of limbo. And while each of the songs herein have some tie to Americana and its musical traditions, some of it ends up sounding contrived - and it was.

Repeat When Necessary wouldn't be the highlight of Edmunds' work from the '70s, but still stands out from some of the similar work from Stiff Records and the like.