Now that last year's big Rockpile cave-in is some distance away, it really does sound as if it was a case of irreconcilable musical differences that broke up the band. Between Nick Lowe's tongue-in-cheek power pop and Dave Edmunds' earnest, steady-state neo-rockabilly rumbles, there might have been too little common ground to sustain their partnership indefinitely. Though there have been two Dave Edmunds albums since the split (Twangin', made with his erstwhile bandmates in happier days, and Best of Dave Edmunds, his swan song for Swan Song), D.E. 7th is his first album of newly recorded material in some time. And a good one it is, the best batch yet of rocky top and rolling bottom from this venerable twang meister.

D.E. 7th makes like the souped-up Chevy of "Me and the Boys" (written by Terry Adams of NRBQ), barreling down the back roads of Fifties-style American musical arcana with the throttle wide open and the top down. It's a classic cruise through the land of Dixie, with stops in Louisiana and deep in the heart of Texas to reconnoiter with hamburger-slinging sweethearts and girls who go bump in the night. And even if Edmunds wrote none of the LP's ten tracks–among them, a droll genre exercise from Bruce Springsteen called "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)" – it's his ceaseless high spirits that allow him to claim these songs as his own. Edmunds treats his repertoire not with an archivist's reverence but with the gleeful gusto of some honky-tonk hooligan blowing the foam off the top of his beer.

This is one hifalutin celebration of American cars and bars that just won't quit. Hop in, anyone? (RS 369)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH