Word: isaak
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...Chris Isaak Speak of the Devil...
...Chris Isaak's latest landscape, Speak of the Devil, seems like familiar territory. It uses some very well-travelled roads, yet manages to not make it very far. You can feel the gears shift as the music gets louder or picks up the tempo, but somehow you aren't making any progress. While the music is pleasant and comforting enough, Isaak never takes the listener anywhere...
...Isaak fits very nicely within the mainstream sound--perhaps too nicely. A little bit of country, a pinch soft rock, and even some alternative have all been mixed together, creating something that is almost likable, yet still complacent and predictable. Noticeably absent are any of the truly intense moments that enable people to love (or hate) music with any passion. It's quite possible to have heard it all before and not realize it, or to confuse the songs with one another...
Even within the easy atmosphere of Isaak's work, there is certainly a little room for wishful thinking. Occasionally, the drums seem to promise a good beat or fun rhythm that never gets delivered. Isaak's voice takes on a more romantic and lovely quality when it is lower and slower, which, in this release, is not very often. The biggest upset is that the last track. "Super Magic 2000," a James Bond-type instrumental, is the most enjoyable song on the entire album. It is a refreshing change from the monotony of the previous 13 pieces, something Isaak should...
...disappoint in this arena either. After a rendition of "Wash Me Clean," a song about "tarnished dreams," lang joked, "I promised that, no matter how tough things got, we would never sell that song to a detergent company!" Her description of the distance between two lovers in Chris Isaak's "Western Stars," from her country album Shadowlands, was also magnificent. But the audience's unquestionable favorite was her version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," in which she lamented at what seems sometimes to be a universal female condition: "I love you even more/than I did before/Oh darling what...