Mr. Lucky is the first album
Chris Isaak has released in seven years but it's hard to call it a comeback: it's been so long since
Isaak had something approaching a crossover hit that it's hard to say that he's been away, that he has something to come back from -- he just appears every few years, such as in March of 2009, when
Mr. Lucky appeared as part of a coordinated multimedia attack. In addition to this new album,
Isaak has a new talk show on
A&E -- like
Elvis Costello's
Spectacle but on basic cable -- and
Mr. Lucky isn't strictly a soundtrack for the show, but it's fair to say that the show gives
Mr. Lucky a larger potential audience than any
Isaak album in a long time, probably since the last time he had a television show in the early-2000s sitcom
The Chris Isaak Show. Given this bigger platform, it makes perfect sense that
Mr. Lucky feels carefully considered: from its production to its construction, it's a deliberate attempt to modernize
Isaak's retro obsessions without abandoning them. Usually, this modernization surfaces in echoey atmospherics partway between
U2 and
Coldplay, textures that suit his melodramatic
Roy Orbison tributes.
Mr. Lucky works because
Isaak and crew don't overplay their hand -- he's never swallowed in waves of digital delay, the way
Roy himself was on his swan song,
Mystery Girl -- but tweak subtly, then alternate these coolly romantic mood pieces with swinging rockabilly, sly low-key grooves, duets with
Trisha Yearwood and
Michelle Branch, breezy pop that harks back to a time prior to the British Invasion, and a big, glitzy Vegas number to close the whole show. As a sensibility, it's no different than anything
Isaak's done, so the difference is the execution, not just in the light, fresh touch of the production but the songs, which are his strongest in a long time -- and that's good enough to please his longtime fans as well as anybody whose interest might be piqued by the new show. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
