POP ALBUM REVIEW : Trapped in a Moody World
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** Chris Isaak, “San Francisco Days,” Warner Bros. Isaak starts his new album by slightly softening his persona in the title song, but it must dawn on him that becoming Michael Franks or Jesse Colin Young is not the way to go, so he quickly cloaks himself once again in the garments of the brokenhearted boy from the Age of Elvis.
With his husky croon and falsetto cries, with tear-drenched organ and guitar lines dripping with trembling vibrato, Isaak continues his glossy homage to the deep moodiness of pop’s late ‘50s-early ‘60s lovelorn wing.
The attention to surface detail makes it a seductive sound, but it signifies those moods without making you feel them. It doesn’t have enough artistic thrust to work as the pop noir that would be its fulfillment--no real desperation and obsession, just the emblems.
There might be worse places to be trapped than in the formal restrictions of this heart-shaped world, but make no mistake, Isaak is trapped.
-- New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).
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