CD: Dave Edmunds - Again

Dave Edmunds is one of a generation of rockers who came of age in the 1970s and excelled in channeling decades of American popular music: cue the pub rock bands, think Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello. There is a mixture of total knowingness and a nostalgic yearning for innocence that characterized the power pop of the period and a return to the three-minute single after the symphonic excesses of pomp and prog rock.

Dave Edmunds channels The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley and Otis Redding on this newly released album, most of which was originally available on his 1994 release Just Plugged. He does it with consummate charm and a good deal of talent, in the way that British singers have always modelled their style on American originals: Rod Stewart on Sam Cooke, Mick Jagger on Don Covay or Joe Cocker on Ray Charles. Edmunds is a genius in the studio, multi-tracking himself and every instrument, piling on just enough reverb for the whole thing to sound appealingly retro.

This is uncomplicated rollicking music, with a heavy sprinkling of Cajun and rockabilly inspired two-steps. Dave Edmunds’s music is super-smooth to the extent that it gleams a little too much. So much surface accomplishment – and it dazzles at times - excludes the possibility of much depth or - let’s be honest – soul.

The new tracks include a stab at “Georgia on my Mind”, an atmospheric  but a little schmaltzy instrumental rendition of Elton John’s “Your Song”. Nothing here, though, to persuade that Dave Edmunds has done much more than repeat himself, as the album’s title “Again” suggests.