Siobhán Longreviews Chris Isaakat the Village
Chris Isaak
The Village
Soaring and swooping between baritone and falsetto, Chris Isaak chews octaves the way the rest of the world inhales a breath. Swing-shifting between lounge-lizard cool, rockabilly sizzle and straight-up rock 'n' roll, he's a musician's Bill Clinton: matinee-idol looks, effortlessly charming, with a razor-sharp wit that's as dry as the Navajo desert.
Hard to believe this Dorian Gray and his band Silvertone have been on the road for more than 20 years. Ever since David Lynch gave Wicked Thing an airing on Wild At Heart, Isaak has been synonymous with crushed velveteen heart-breaker music, the bastard offspring of Roy Orbison and Elvis, with, one suspects, a spell in the foster care of Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore somewhere along the way.
On the first of his two-night Irish debut, Isaak delivered a blistering gig that shimmied all the way from the dressing room to the merchandising stall, where Isaak dallied happily while the sweat dried into his immaculately-tailored, Tennessee-inspired blue suit.
Silvertone were tighter than a six-piece has a right to be. With a drummer who's a dead ringer for Little Stevie Van Zandt's Sopranos character Silvio Dante, and a lead guitarist who could make a two-stringed tea chest croon like an angel, they relished the indolent pacing of Only The Lonely, wallowed in the lushly nocturnal Blue Hotel and Wicked Game and hurtled through the blue-skied San Francisco Days; they rocked and boogied, sidled and two-stepped around Isaak's pitch-perfect, often tongue-in-cheek delivery.
Later, after he'd blinded us with the spectral brilliance of his mirrored suit, Isaak gloried in a set list that hit on everything from Two Hearts to Dancin' and Forever Blue, like a testosterone-driven adolescent who finds himself inexplicably in the midst of a Peter Greenaway film.
By his own admission, Isaak has played enough broom closets and urinals to recognise an enthusiastic audience when he sees one. He's also tested and tasted of enough of life's pleasures and pain to realise the fickleness of both, so his live performance is shot through with a belief that, while music mightn't offer any salvation, it's a mean pathway to (temporary) nirvana, given the right company.
Despite the intermittently muddy acoustics of the venue, this was one of the gigs of the year: an unexpected delight.
Siobhán Long
