Back catalogue: Blues

Review: A reissue of a reissue of Chris Isaak's 1989 opus Heart Shaped World - his third and best-known album, and the first to be released by Reprise Records. Heart Shaped World is Isaak's best-known album for a very good reason: by 1989, the American rockabilly musician had already released two rather ghostly, reverb-doused solo record, and it just so happened that he'd find himself within dark surrealist filmmaker David Lynch's orbit at this same time. It wasn't long before the filmmaker would commission one of Isaak's songs in his next film; this turned out to be Wild At Heart, for one of whose's ending montage sequences Isaak's 'Heart Shaped World' was both a titular and moody fit. Wicked Game was thus a unique record in that it would be catapulted to chart success despite sounding like nothing else in the charts at the time; Isaak recalls the Roy Orbison-esque style that still resounds so familiarly, yet uncannily in the Anglo-American psyche.