| | Chris Isaak CD Chris Isaak Discography of CDs
 (3 Customer Reviews)
Having established a winning musical combination on Silvertone, Chris Isaak and his band essentially continue it with little variation on his second album, 11 songs of smoky, wounded romance and dark menace given great all-around performances. Isaak's gift for capturing a perfect blend of early rock & roll twang and making it sound perfectly of the now is his greatest strength, and if later albums showed him finding new ways to twist and develop his approach, the relatively straight-up work here is more than fine. "Blue Hotel" is easily the killer track on the album, James Wilsey's spaghetti Western lead guitar and Isaak's yearning, lost singing perfectly matched. There are plenty of other reasons to listen in, though. "You Owe Me Some Kind of Love" is in many ways the precursor to Forever Blue's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing," only before the breakup, though still charged with a threat of desire and need. Wilsey's concluding guitar solo is especially sharp, and the way Isaak delivers the chorus balances between melancholy and urgency. For all the Roy Orbison comparisons Isaak won, "Cryin'" is in fact an original, but Isaak does tip his hat another direction with an attractive remake of the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul," making it sound very much like an Isaak original instead of a worshipful carbon copy. Erik Jacobsen's production again emphasizes Kenney Dale Johnson's drumming without making it suffer from late-'80s corporate rock disease, while touches like the sax on "Lie to Me" and the buried strings and wordless backing vocals elsewhere adds depth and lushness to the album in just-right amounts. The whole experience is pure doom-haunted passion, elegantly on the run away from -- or towards -- someone. All that and a killer cover photo as well, the iris of Isaak's eye only just in the light. ~ Ned Raggett
Live Recording
Personnel includes: Chris Isaak, James Calvin Wilsey, Kenny Dale Johnson, Rowland Salley.
Purchase Chris Isaak CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Chris Isaak Silvertone CD (1985)
Chris Isaak album
 $10.05  
Chris Isaak's debut album, Silvertone, named after his three-piece backup group, sets the pattern for his subsequent albums in its meticulously constructed retro sound. Isaak enters a time machine and emerges around 1960, when Roy Orbison is ruling the charts with his melodramatic ballads and Elvis Presley has just returned from the Army. Of course, what passed for a style 25 years before is in Isaak's hands stylization, and when he wails in an Orbison falsetto of romantic desperation, then does a flat, Presley-like recitation in the album-closing "Western Stars," ...
| | Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World CD (1989)
Chris Isaak CD music
$9.29 
Chris Isaak's dark, sultry, reverb-drenched "Wicked Game" poured out of radios across the nation in 1990, pushing the sales of HEART SHAPED WORLD well past platinum. With its meandering melody, moody atmospherics, and Isaak's half-baritone, half-falsetto delivery, its popularity was no accident: the song is a piece of pop perfection. Isaak's aesthetic is heavily retro--he borrows from the high, poignant drama of Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley (and even his chiseled features and slicked-back hair seem like something off a Sun Records album cover)--yet he combines his influences in a fresh and compelling way.
HEART SHAPED WORLD holds to the promise of "Wicked Game," making for a record that begs to be played at 2:00 in the morning, with neon light streaming ...
| | Chris Isaak San Francisco Days CD (1993)
Chris Isaak music CDs
$8.55
On the follow-up to his breakthrough album HEART SHAPED WORLD, Chris Isaak continued with his dusky, Sun Records-influenced sound, while expanding his horizons just a bit. Despite the self-consciously retro album cover (everything down to the typeface suggests that it might have been released in the 1960s), Isaak doesn't merely replicate the feel of romantic ballads from bygone rock & roll eras; rather, he updates them for the '90s with very subtle touches of jazz, funk, and blues boogie.
But none of this is to say Isaak is experimenting wildly. SAN FRANCISCO DAYS still channels Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, updating the smoke-filled sound of twangy country ballads and laid-back, electric guitar-driven tunes from the '60s with pristine, high-end production. The combination is a winner, thanks in large part to Isaak's rich, knee-weakening croon, which is well showcased throughout. With its strong batch of songs, SAN FRANCISCO DAYS is in some ways an even better listen than HEART SHAPED WORLD.
Recording information: Dave Wellhausen Studio; Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, CA.
Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); James Calvin ...
| | Chris Isaak Forever Blue CD (1995)
Chris Isaak songs
$9.75  
FOREVER BLUE was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "Somebody's Crying" was nominated for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
What most people remember about Chris Isaak's infamous video for the 1989 single "Wicked Game" is that he gets the beautiful woman. That's because most people weren't listening. Chris Isaak's entire oeuvre is about losing beautiful women, and he has lost them with a heart-rending relentlessness that makes Roy Orbison seem like a romantic success in comparison.
The remarkable FOREVER BLUE, his fifth album, was written after a personal event that Isaak says "wasn't actually like a break up. It was like an explosion." For someone who seems to almost cultivate romantic depression, that must have been nothing short of inspirational, and on FOREVER BLUE he turns the resulting emotions (sadness, bitterness, loneliness) into a sustained thesis on the wicked game of love. The growling, swamp-blues opener "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" portrays true love as a knife, a thing that hurts more and more the deeper it goes. It begins with the question "You ever love someone so much you thought your little heart was gonna break in two?"
Isaak obviously has, and he seems to relish the inevitable hurt, as if the pain fuels his engine. With reverb-drenched guitars and trembling organs setting a plaintive mood that you might call high lonesome rockabilly, Isaak sings about it in low, sexy whispers and high, wailing cries, sometimes within the same line. "No reason left for living," he sighs in the young-Elvis-like title-ballad, and then he remembers one--"new tears to cry." In the disarmingly peppy "I Believe," he professes his belief in "lovers walking side by side" and "a beautiful ...
| | Chris Isaak Speak Of The Devil CD (1998)
Chris Isaak album
$9.49 
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
Gorgeous and vibrant, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL boasts the strong crooning of Chris Isaak backed by the full-bodied, twanging guitar that's made his music such a distinctive pleasure since the mid-'80s. Isaak's focus on love and the different phases of relationships means that songs range from the built-up desperation in "Please" to the airy optimism of "Flying," punched up by chirpy background singers.
Silvertone (whose collective name is unacknowledged here) continues to be the most underrated back-up band in the biz, with their distinctive rootsy mix of blues, rockabilly and country. Hershel Yatovitz's shimmering guitar is pumped with reverb to add the proper urgency to "Wanderin'" and he contributes Spanish-flavored acoustic guitar to "Don't Get So Down On Yourself." But for all the smoldering edge that Isaak puts on slower songs such as the enticing "Talkin' Bout A Home," the Californian excels on faster numbers like the swinging "I'm Not Sleepy." Isaak's adventurousness leads him to end the album with the noirish instrumental "Super Magic 2000," complete with Peter Gunn-like tempo and solid surf-guitar adornments mixed with chirping crickets and blasting shotgun sound effects.
Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); Hershel Yatovitz (vocals, guitar); Kenney Dale Johnson (vocals, drums); Rowland Salley (vocals).
Audio Mixers: Chris Lord-Alge; Mark Needham.
Photographer: Melanie Nissen.
Unknown ...
| | NOFX Ribbed CD (1990)
Chris Isaak CD music
$10.35
Before NOFX became the fathers of humorous but hard-edged punk rock, they were just four pretty obnoxious Californians with a penchant for fast music and dirty jokes. Ribbed isn't exactly the group's breakthrough into content filled rock, but their typically hard-edged punk has enough dirty humor that anyone with their mind in the gutter should at least get few smirks over the course of the record. Besides the sophomoric gross out of "The Moron Brothers" and the double-entendre ridden "Together on the Sand," none of these songs have even made it into the later live shows of the band, and the reason is pretty obvious. Among tracks about not showering and fake boobs, the group runs through their typical gamut of punk styles, but there is nothing as immediately catchy or edgy as their later work and more often than not the songs are far from memorable high speed rants about nothing. NOFX completeists may feel a need to place this record in their collections, but the odds are, in light of the band's much more impressive later work, that it will rarely merit listening and, when it does, will probably be more for reminiscing than for actual enjoyment. NOFX are a great punk rock band, but Ribbed is a rocky start that falls way to short way too often. ~ Peter J. D'Angelo
Recorded at West Beach Recorders, Los Angeles, California in September 1990.
NoFx: Izzy Drew Lynn (vocals, guitar); ...
| | Ralph Covert Eat At Godot's CD (1993)
Chris Isaak music CDs
$12.39
Singer-songwriters are as common as table salt, but every so often you come across an artist of understated brilliance. Better known as the frontman of the Bad Examples, Covert here offers up a fabulous collection of folk-tinged pop songs. The melodies are catchy but don't wear out their welcome, and the lyrics are filled with real emotion and a bit of pleasant melancholy. From the breezy panic of "Out of My Element" to the gleeful despair of "Small Grey Rain," this is a must-buy album, even if you have to special-order it from your local record store. ~ Tim Sheridan
Recorded at Jor-Dan Studios, Wheaton, Illinois.
Personnel: Ralph Covert (vocals, whistling, guitar, dobro, piano); John Duich (guitar, slide guitar); Sérgio Pires (guitar); Tom O'Brien (acoustic guitar); Mark Richardson (slide guitar); David Katz, Karen Nelson (violin); Adam Smyla (viola); Andy Snow (cello); Howard Levy (harmonica); Judith Kulb (oboe); Tom Elferdink (saxophone); Brian Anderson (piano); Pat Brennan (organ); Terry Wathen (drums, percussion).
Audio Mixer: Michael Freeman.
Recording information: Jor-Dan Studios, Wheaton, IL; Sun Studio, ...
| | Killing Joke Revelations CD (1982)
Chris Isaak songs
$9.79
The chief criticism many Killing Joke fans level at Revelations is that it is underproduced. When compared with later albums such as Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions and Pandemonium, Revelations does seem to lack some sonic kick, but only for listeners not digging deep enough into the dusty labyrinth herein. Criticism of the production ignores the reality that the album is a joyous, original world unto itself. Sounding as if it was recorded in some mad, dub chamber, Revelations reveals many artsy, staccato pleasures. "Dregs," "Land of Milk and Honey," and "The Pandys Are Coming" blend stream-of-consciousness lyrics with blaring, distorted guitars and punchy drumming. Jaz Coleman has never sounded more confused and happy. This translates to the listener in the form of dark, fun soundscapes.
The album is not about the accessible, synth-heavy charms of Firedances, a later album, or the political murkiness of What's THIS For...!, an earlier release. Revelations is similar, in a sense, to Brighter Than a Thousand Suns and Outside the Gate, in that all three albums suggest less aggressive, more experimental facets of the band. Unlike the grasps at emotion on Brighter and Outside, Revelations trudges a noisy and unfocused (to the point of brilliance) middle ground between the band's electronic and guitar leanings. "Dregs," in particular, is indicative of the state of the band at the time; Coleman simply blurts out whatever comes to his mind as the rest of the band creates militant, swarming background squalls. It's the sound of industrial music being created before your very ears. Nine Inch Nails and Ministry would later mine the sound for everything it was worth. Repeat listens of Revelations reveal it to be a most enjoyable departure for one of the greatest, most underappreciated post-punk bands of the '80s. Revelations sees Killing Joke mangling and discarding the rules of modern rock music with demented, inspired genius. ~ Tim DiGravina
Revelations is the epitome of the "difficult third album syndrome." Using an outside producer (Konrad Plank) for the first time seems only to have resulted in headaches and confusion. Recorded in Berlin, the location must have rubbed off on the band -- witness the Teutonic undertones of "We Have Joy." The truth was that the original Killing Joke lineup was dissolving fast, and Revelations manifests itself in the lack of cohesion and direction on the album. ~ Alex Ogg
Revelations is the epitome of the "difficult third album syndrome." Using an outside producer (Konrad Plank) for the first time seems only ...
| | Oscar Peterson Classic Jazz Archive CD (2005) (Import) United Kingdom
Chris Isaak album
$23.29
| | Bernie D Metz Songs Of Life And Love CD (2002)
Chris Isaak CD music
$12.69
Ms.Metz has been performing since the age of 5. This disc is a labor of love ...
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