Recorded simultaneously with
Nick Lowe's
Labour of Lust,
Dave Edmunds'
Repeat When Necessary continues the winning streak of
Get It and
Tracks on Wax 4 simply by sticking to the formula. Though
Rockpile's sound is a little cleaner here than before, nothing's changed but the songs, which are uniformly excellent. Culled primarily from pub rock contemporaries (and containing no
Lowe songs whatsoever), the record contains four classics:
Elvis Costello's galloping "Girls Talk," and
Graham Parker's relentless "Crawling from the Wreckage," the funny (a rarity of
Edmunds) "Creature from the Black Lagoon," and the country-rocker "Queen of Hearts," which would later become a hit for
Juice Newton in exactly the same arrangement. A few songs come close to meeting this high standard, but they are occasionally hampered by a tightness similar to the pinched rhythms of Subtle as a Flying Mallet; in particular, the early
Huey Lewis song "Bad Is Bad" and the old
Brinsley Schwarz number "Home in My Hand" are hurt by this. But these are minor flaws --
Repeat When Necessary is an energetic, old-fashioned rock & roll record that ranks as
Edmunds' last great album. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine