Bill Lloyd “Set to Pop”<i> ESD</i>

This is one of those pure-pop delights that seems to come along only once every couple of years. The 15 tracks here were recorded in dribs and drabs over the last several years while Bill Lloyd, half of the late-’80s country duo Foster and Lloyd, spent most of his time writing for other singers in one of Nashville’s numerous song factories.

Neither the hodgepodge manner in which it came together nor his country background prepare you for the many charms of this solo effort. It’s as catchy as flypaper, with enough hooks to spook a whole school of tuna.

Lloyd’s pop-music touchstones are as old as Buddy Holly, as formidable as the Beatles and as recent as Marshall Crenshaw, who, not coincidentally, makes a cameo appearance on the opening track, “I Went Electric.”

He can suck you into a song like “In the Line of Fire” with an enigmatic opening verse: “She likes the way I listen / Ignores my indecision / Telling me things I don’t want to know.”

In “Trampoline,” he holds the listener with musical allusions to twang guitar king Duane Eddy and to the Rebels’ “Wild Weekend” (upon which the Cars pretty much based its entire career), all tossed in so casually they seem spontaneous.

“In a Perfect World” is one of several tunes that could serve as a primer in canny lyric writing. And anybody who can quote a classic Three Stooges routine as cleverly as Lloyd does (in the misspelled “Niagra Falls”) can never be accused of taking himself too seriously.

The subjects are fairly basic: yearning to fall in love, falling in love, falling out of love. But to paraphrase that old popmeister Ira Gershwin: It’s got rhythm, it’s got music and, in the unexpectedly thought-provoking “Channeling the King,” it’s got Elvis. Who could ask for anything more?