The remarkable FOREVER BLUE, his fifth album, was written after a personal event that Isaak says "wasn't actually like a break up. It was like an explosion." For someone who seems to almost cultivate romantic depression, that must have been nothing short of inspirational, and on FOREVER BLUE he turns the resulting emotions (sadness, bitterness, loneliness) into a sustained thesis on the wicked game of love. The growling, swamp-blues opener "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" portrays true love as a knife, a thing that hurts more and more the deeper it goes. It begins with the question "You ever love someone so much you thought your little heart was gonna break in two?" Isaak obviously has, and he seems to relish the inevitable hurt, as if the pain fuels his engine. With reverb-drenched guitars and trembling organs setting a plaintive mood that you might call high lonesome rockabilly, Isaak sings about it in low, sexy whispers and high, wailing cries, sometimes within the same line. "No reason left for living," he sighs in the young-Elvis-like title-ballad, and then he remembers one--"new tears to cry." In the disarmingly peppy "I Believe," he professes his belief in "lovers walking side by side" and "a beautiful day." But, of course, there's a punchline: "not for me/And not for you." That's because you walked into his world, and he's going to pull you under, too.

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