Chris Isaak's first album in four years, "San Francisco Days," marks no great departures from his previous three. Recorded once again with his same Silvertone band and producer Erik Jacobsen, this is another Isaak collection of brooding songs about unslaked lust and half-completed break-ups; his restrained but lush voice is still out in front of the heavily echoed popabilly guitars. Nonetheless there are subtle differences in this project that make it more varied, more open, more aggressive and better overall than its predecessors. For example, "Lonely with a Broken Heart" sounds like the ultimate Isaak title, but the song is delivered at a brisk swing tempo, pushed by the soulful B-3 organ of the Robert Cray Band's Jimmy Pugh, and Isaak's carefree vocal makes it clear that the song is meant as a sarcastic taunt to a lover who expects him to come crawling back. A similar twist informs "Except the New Girl," which is lit up by lovely steel guitar lines from Tom Brumley (ex-Buck Owens); Isaak confesses to a woman that "there's never been anyone else...," but then adds the kicker, "except the new girl." "Round & Round" features some dirty guitar and a chugging beat, while the album closes with the best song Neil Diamond ever wrote, "Solitary Man," which sounds more lonely and desperate in this minimalist arrangement than it ever did before. Isaak's trump card, as always, is his singing. Like his heroes Roy Orbison and Don Everly, Isaak sings as if it were always 3 a.m., when every other gambit has failed and there are no options left but complete honesty. He pulls so tightly on the reins to his voice that he usually sings in a husky whisper, which is no less lush for being held back. And when he loosens the reins and allows his handsome tenor to rise in power, as it does on the incandescent falsetto chorus to the first single, "Can't Do a Thing (To Stop Me)," the effect is thrilling. --Jeffrey Himes
