by Matt Barr

Some of the best of Chris Isaak

The Best of Chris Isaak is out, and it's a decent collection. I like the inclusion of pre-Wicked Game songs like Blue Hotel, You Owe Me Some Kind of Love and Dancin'. I probably would have picked Gone Ridin' over Dancin'.

The acoustic Orbison cover Only the Lonely makes it over a better Pretty Girls Don't Cry from Baja Sessions, both are great but Pretty Girls might be Isaak's best song. Unless it's Heart Shaped World, which I would have picked over Blue Spanish Sky from the same album. Walk Slow, Breaking Apart or even Flyin' from Speak of the Devil could have been included instead of what seems like too many songs from San Francisco Days.

This is all picky, it's a good representative sample of Isaak's best. There are three new songs, including King Without a Castle, a snappy enough tune if not as clever as Let Me Down Easy or Somebody's Crying; and a cover of Cheap Trick's I Want You To Want Me, which is made uniquely Isaak with falsettos and singing lines in a new order. There's also a new acoustic version of Forever Blue, which frankly loses something in the breezy way it's executed. The song is Isaak's signature piece, which means the end of the world has to be going on. You can't coo it.

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