Chris Isaak can sing, play guitar and wear a mirror suit like nobody’s business – as he proved at the Jube Tuesday night. (Sun Media photo)

Not since Jann Arden’s concert – well, really, just last week – has a performer so lit up the Jubilee Auditorium like Chris Isaak did on Tuesday night.

That’s a literal lighting up, too. In what was already a show to remember, Isaak shuffled off towards the end of his set only to re-emerge frocked in a suit that was covered top to bottom in mirrors, itself a costume change from the snazzy ’50s-style baby blue suit he’d been wearing up until that point.

Isaak, the rockabilly disco ball, sent beams of light shooting across the Jube, and the nearly sold-out crowd beamed right back at him – it was a sea of smiles out there.

In lesser hands, the trappings of an Isaak performance might play out a little, or a lot, on the cheesy side. Beyond the suits, there was his bounding into the crowd not once but twice, sitting in an empty seat directly behind mine the first time and running all the way up to the Jube’s third deck the second time.

He invited a bevy of babes he’d been spying in the crowd to come up and join him on stage and dance a little.

He even had a guy run out in a Mexican Luchadore mask and cape, for pity’s sake.

“Paris, New York, Edmonton. If you play those cities, you have to bring it,” he smiled.

If he weren’t such a tall, dark, handsome and charismatic drink of water– with a great complexion, too, he noted – none of it would work. And if he couldn’t actually sing or play the guitar … forget about it.

Fortunately, Isaak can play, devastatingly so, and belt ’em out, showing off his falsetto’s range on classics like Two Hearts and Go Walking Down There.

It was probably a foregone conclusion that he’d play his biggest hit, Wicked Game, but he also played the somewhat lesser known, aching and acoustic Blue Spanish Sky as his finale. Both tunes made it onto the soundtrack to 1991’s Wild at Heart, a film that represented an undoubted big break for Isaak.

The tributes dipped even further back with a fun segue between his own Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing and, too briefly, Elvis Presley’s Don’t Be Cruel. The faithful cover of Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely made perfect sense, but what turned out to be a killer take on Cheap Trick’s I Want You To Want Me mightn’t have been quite as obvious. The hurtin’ twitches and rockin’ licks and kicks through his set would have done the likes of Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry proud.

Behind many great performers are great bands, and Isaak’s crew of more than 20 years is no exception. Smartly suited up in a Sun Records-era style, they carried the show when Isaak would disappear into the crowd or play mostly silent straight men to the scamp’s ongoing cheekiness. Top to bottom – bass, guitar, keys (and accordion), drums and percussion – the boys were on point, rolling with the changeups and working without a set list.

“Just imagine how good they’d be if they rehearsed,” Isaak mused.

Could it have been any better? The mind reels …