Speak of the devil, here's Isaak in flip-flops

Toronto Star
10/10/98
By Betsy Powell, pop music critic

This wasn't to be yer run of the mill rock 'n' roll interview.

A photographer stormed out of the hotel room even before the weird duet broke out.

But the surest sign this press-do would be ``different'' was Chris Isaak's feet - or more precisely the California crooner's flip-flop footwear.

The elastic-voiced, chiselled-featured envoy from the Eisenhower decade was in town to plug his new album, Speak Of The Devil (Warner), and to perform at Monday's MuchMoreMusic's launch party.

Dressed in chinos, his muscular arms bulging through a lime-green 1950s shirt, the one-time semi-pro boxer was soon joined by Kenney Dale Johnson, the drummer in Isaak's permanent backing band, the Silvertones.

(Johnson's footwear? Black, ankle-high cowboy boots, with spurs, naturally.)

Minutes after the drummer's arrival, a grim-faced photog (from another paper) fled the room - unamused, apparently, by the pair's goofy antics.

Shrugging off the shooter's scramble, Isaak and Johnson indulged in an impromptu noon-hour serenade - an interview icebreaker the singer favours - before settling into chairs to speak no ill of Speak Of The Devil.

Isaak, 42, does this reluctantly, preferring conversational digressions and droll interjections - or the chance to break into one of the characters the sometime actor has played on the big screen.

``I wear a butternut brown suit and a big shiny badge. I carry a gun, but I don't harm anyone,'' he says in the drawl of a Southern sheriff from an upcoming film, Shepherd.

But back to record-making for a moment. After 1996's acoustic-based Baja Sessions - a mellow, pretty CD that wasn't a big seller - Isaak and crew plugged back in and turned up the volume.

He thinks the folks at the Warner label ``are probably more excited about this record than they have been for a while because it is more rocking and more down the path that they actually understand.''

Speak Of The Devil is a mix of dark, yearning ballads and crisp, upbeat rockers in the musical mould of Roy Orbison, early Elvis Presley and surf-rock king Dick Dale.

The moody title track explodes with a passionate chorus and soaring, melancholy guitar chords; ``I'm Not Sleepy,'' is bubbling rockabilliy; the more contemplative ``Please'' and ``Flying'' are sure to please fans of Isaak's 1991 breakthrough hit, ``Wicked Game.''

Isaak broke from his usual San Francisco recording routine. Rather than practising in his garage, the band rented rehearsal space in a cement building sandwiched between a Roto-Rooter place and a carpet depot ``so we could play as loud as we wanted.''

The change of scenery - such as it was - also inspired Isaak to enter into the experimental mode responsible for the album's textured feel.

He tried backward loops, loaded up on synthesizers - both state-of- the art and old Moog-style - ``and tried a lot of other strange things, including cricket chirps and bits and pieces of phone messages.''

Isaak fans might be surprised to find the singer teamed with high- powered songwriter Diane Warren (Celine Dion, Deborah Cox) on ``Breaking Apart,'' a mournful, Orbison-esque ballad that ought to be stamped ``Off Limits'' to recently love-spurned listeners.

``She is a person who is totally out of her mind,'' Isaak says of Warren. ``We sat on the floor and she pounded on my guitar when I was playing.''

He sought Warren's services to bring a different style to the table ``because I already have my tricks, my abilities . . . I didn't want more of the same.

``She has those big, powerful choruses and I thought it would be a great combination.''

Lyrically, affairs of the heart are still what inspire Isaak - and some of the tunes on the new disc offer clues as to what's going on in that department.

``Half of the things I write are about my life,'' he confides wistfully, ``and half of the things are about the way I wish they could be.' '

Indeed, some of the songs on Speak Of The Devil capture the stirrings of heartbreak still fresh and raw.

Others, like ``Talkin' 'Bout A Home,'' project a desire - that's all it is so far - to settle down.

``You've got to find somebody that's simpatico, that's what it's all about,'' Isaak explains.

``I'm looking, but right now everything's off because I've been on the road. It ruins everything for me.''

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