Chris Isaak Heart Shaped World – MoFi SACD

There was nothing in contemporary music like Chris Isaak’s Heart Shaped World when it hit shelves in June 1989. More than three decades later, the singer-songwriter’s third album still sounds unique — and claims a backstory nearly as fascinating as the retro-leaning material and standout performances that propelled it to sales of more than 2.5 million copies. Home to the Top 10 smash “Wicked Game,” the set remains a masterful mood piece that invites you to pour a late-night drink, sit in a dimmed room, and relish Isaak’s elegant albeit raw ruminations on love, relationships, and questionable decisions.

Sourced from the original master tapes and housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, Mobile Fidelity’s numbered-edition hybrid SACD presents Heart Shaped World in audiophile quality. It unearths the staggering inner details, saturated tones, and brilliant atmospherics of the crisp production. And it brings you up close and personal with Isaak’s spectacular singing — impeccably controlled, tense, brooding, steamy, smoldering, haunted — situated amidst stripped-down backdrops that allow notes to fully bloom and decay.

Heart Shaped World further boosts its merit via its abundant stylistic variations, from the upbeat country-and-western trot of “I’m Not Waiting” and Spanish acoustic shimmer of the jazz-based ballad “Blue Spanish Sky” to the swinging horn-accompanied grooves of “Don’t Make Me Love You” and desert smokiness of the understated “Kings of the Highway.” On the latter, Isaak comes across as resigned and absolute. His singing and pain worm their way into your soul, and echo akin to the way the music prepares to strike when you least expect.

“Trouble going ’round,” Isaak croons right as the album begins. “Trouble going down.” Damn straight.

A quick note on “In the Heat of the Jungle”: On original CD releases of Heart Shaped World, this track clocks in at 6:20. For this reissue, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab used the shorter 4:38 version originally included on original vinyl copies of Heart Shaped World. The label supplied MoFi with the shorter version.