Recorded simultaneously with Nick Lowe's Labour of Lust, 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.
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