Reputations can be dangerous in and of themselves.

This album has been in The Stack—the mini-tower of to-be-reviewed albums on my desk—for literally years now. The reason is simple; Seconds Of Pleasure carries around with it the reputation of a lost classic, an underappreciated masterpiece, insert your own superlative here. Critics love love love it—and on my first listen, I genuinely didn’t get the fuss.

It’s certainly got the pedigree. British early-rock aficionados Dave Edmunds (guitar, vocals), Nick Lowe (bass, vocals), Billy Bremner (guitar, vocals) and Terry Williams (drums, vocals) had been a touring-and-recording unit for several years prior to Seconds, playing out live as Rockpile while serving as the backing band for one another’s solo projects in the studio. The reasons for that odd arrangement, and its consequences, occupy seven full paragraphs on the band’s Wikipedia page; the short version amounts to egos and lawyers.

The great irony is that once the four lads had cleared the necessary contractual hurdles to record as Rockpile, they made exactly one studio album before breaking up. It’s as if they needed a strong leader running the show in the studio each time, because once they entered it as a democracy, the band began to fall apart.

In the meantime, though, they made Seconds Of Pleasure, a lollapalooza of retro-rock paying tribute to the likes of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, and Chuck Berry. (The original album consisted of a 12-track LP supplemented by a four-track single; those 16 tracks comprise the bulk of the 2004 CD edition reviewed here, which adds three live cuts.) The early-rock stylings of Seconds stood in sharp contrast to the prevalent genres of the day—disco, punk, and AOR—while offering a nod to the retro strain of the New Wave movement.

The early-’60s musical frame of reference is clear from the first notes of opener “Teacher, Teacher,” a cover borrowed from ’60s band the Creation. Lowe sings lead while Edmunds and Bremner provide close harmonies within a driving early rock arrangement, their voices meshing wonderfully. The song became a minor hit, which seems to have been as much a reaction to its uniqueness in the musical context of the times as to its quality; it’s enthusiastically played and sung, but lyrically a pretty by-the-book “I’ve got a crush on my teacher” number.

Edmunds steps up to the mike for the cheeky Joe Tex cover “If Sugar Was As Sweet As You,” a chugging boogie with exuberant vocals that, like its predecessor, commits the crime of fading out (don’t blame the producer… they self-produced). Bremner takes a turn out front with the album’s first Rockpile original, the early-Motown-flavored “Heart.” The group also pens “Now And Always,” featuring rippling guitar and an Everly Brothers feel; it’s both melodic and sincere. A shuffling cover of the 1967 Kip Anderson soul-blues single “A Knife And A Fork” is less successful.

Lowe contributes (and sings) an album highlight with “Play That Fast Thing (One More Time),” a suitably fast-paced early-rock rave-up that has some Jerry Lee Lewis in its veins, not to mention Chuck Berry. The one real curveball they throw is an almost hyperactive cover of the Squeeze tune “Wrong Again (Let’s Face It),” leading into their own New Wave-styled “Pet You And Hold You.” This brief diversion feels like their cue to return to the source with an exuberant cover of Berry’s own “Oh What A Thrill."

The final quarter of the original LP is where Rockpile stashes some of its best work. Their self-penned “When I Write The Book” is a joyous celebration, and the tempo only increases for their driving “Fool Too Long,” which Edmunds delivers with abundant sass. They close out with a genuine nugget, turning the 1962 Rockin’ Sidney B-side “You Ain’t Nothin’ But Fine” into a pumping rocker with Berry-adjacent guitar riffing and that simple, memorable chorus hook “You ain’t nothin’ but fine, fine, fine / And I wish you were mine, mine, mine.”

The original album’s supplemental four-track single finds the quartet returning to the source to deliver four covers of familiar Everly Brothers tunes. Especially notable are a beautiful take on “Crying In The Rain” and a run at “When Will I Be Loved” that’s much more faithful to the harmony-rich mid-tempo original than the raucous Linda Ronstadt version.

The three live tracks tacked onto the CD version are a nice capsule of the band in a live setting, even if the song choices feel a little odd. “Back To Schooldays” is a tight, raw cover of a number by Rockpile contemporary Graham Parker. Then Lowe’s “They Called It Rock” delivers a rough-edged rockabilly anthem fresh out of 1962, before they finish with another Parker cover, this time a positively storming version of his “Crawling From The Wreckage.”

I’m glad I came back around to Seconds Of Pleasure, because while this album was never going to win any lyric-writing awards, it really is a good time, and whenever Lowe, Edmunds and Bremner nail a multi-part harmony bit, it takes what the band is doing—turning the clock back to around 1960, basically—to the next level.

Rockpile was a band out of time that burned hot and flamed out fast, though various combinations of the four principals continued to record together through the ’80s. The magic captured here, though, was destined to be one-and-done, and while I wouldn’t call Seconds Of Pleasure a masterpiece, if you dig the sounds of early rock played with deep affection and exuberance, you should definitely search it out.

Rating: B+

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