FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Twenty-Seven: INXS
___________
FOR this twenty-seventh….
edition of A Buyer’s Guide, I am interested in the legendary Australian band, INXS. Led by the incredible Michael Hutchence (who sadly died in 1997; the band split up in 2012), the Australian group have released some stunning albums. I have highlighted their four best, one that is underrated, in addition to their final album – and a book that acts as a pretty useful companion. We all know the classic INXS cuts, and I am a big fan of their wonderful music! If you need a guide to INXS, have a look at the suggestions below, and I think that they will guide you…
IN the right direction.
______________
The Four Essential Albums
The Swing
Release Date: April 1984
Labels: WEA/Mercury/Atco
Producers: Nick Launay/Nile Rodgers
Standout Tracks: I Send a Message/Dancing on the Jetty/Burn for You
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-The-Swing/master/71986
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fxoua5j7qfLmQGkf1TPIN
Review:
“Consolidating the strengths of Shabooh Shoobah, The Swing is the first consistently impressive INXS album. With the Nile Rodgers-produced "Original Sin" acting as the centerpiece, The Swing retains the new wave pop sense and rock attack of their earlier albums, while adding a stronger emphasis on dance rhythms. At the same time, the group's songwriting had improved, with more than half of the album featuring memorable hooks” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Original Sin
Listen Like Thieves
Release Date: 14th October, 1985
Labels: Atlantic/Mercury/WEA
Producer: Chris Thomas
Standout Tracks: What You Need/Listen Like Thieves/This Time
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-Listen-Like-Thieves/master/137590
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1U6tgUieq2uuKip6DVxM31
Review:
“Which is why Listen Like Thieves feels like a moment worth preserving—a snapshot of a band finding its voice and its lane in real time and figuring out how to do something that seems nearly beyond comprehension 35 years later. There are no heirs apparent. The 1975 have the big-tent ambition and certainly the look, but are complicated and navel gaze-y in a way INXS never seemed interested in. The Killers have the chart success but a decidedly Mormon interpretation of sex appeal. Coldplay have to work too hard to convince you that they’re any fun. Spoon have the songs and the hooks and the decades of consistency that make them easy to overlook, but not the actual hits. (Oh god, is it Maroon 5?) But the notion of sex, drugs, and dance-oriented, innocuous, hugely popular rock’n’roll as a formula for a decades-long career in some ways died with Hutchence. This almost sounds like a backhanded compliment now but it should be a badge of honor: INXS were a very good band that was very good at their job and that no longer really exists” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)
Kick
Release Date: 12th October, 1987 (L.P. & Cassette)/26th October, 1987 (C.D.)
Labels: WEA/Atlantic/Mercury
Producer: Chris Thomas
Standout Tracks: New Sensation/Never Tear Us Apart/Mystify
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-Kick/master/68453
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7cuwWzS0oiApEt2fpKafkX
Review:
“"What You Need" had taken INXS from college radio into the American Top Five, but there was little indication that the group would follow it with a multi-platinum blockbuster like Kick. Where the follow-ups to "What You Need" made barely a ripple on the pop charts, Kick spun off four Top Ten singles, including the band's only American number one, "Need You Tonight." Kick crystallized all of the band's influences -- Stones-y rock & roll, pop, funk, contemporary dance-pop -- into a cool, stylish dance/rock hybrid. It was perfectly suited to lead singer Michael Hutchence's feline sexuality, which certainly didn't hurt the band's already inventive videos. But it wasn't just image that provided their breakthrough. For the first (and really only) time, INXS made a consistently solid album that had no weak moments from top to bottom. More than that, really, Kick is an impeccably crafted pop tour de force, the band succeeding at everything they try. Every track has at least a subtly different feel from what came before it; INXS freely incorporates tense guitar riffs, rock & roll anthems, swing-tinged pop/rock, string-laden balladry, danceable pop-funk, horn-driven '60s soul, '80s R&B, and even a bit of the new wave-ish sound they'd started out with. More to the point, every song is catchy and memorable, branded with indelible hooks. Even without the band's sense of style, the flawless songcraft is intoxicating, and it's what makes Kick one of the best mainstream pop albums of the '80s” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Need You Tonight
Welcome to Wherever You Are
Release Date: 3rd August, 1992
Labels: Atlantic (U.S.)/Mercury (E.U.)/East West Records
Producers: Mark Opitz/INXS
Standout Tracks: Heaven Sent/Taste It/Beautiful Girl
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-Welcome-To-Wherever-You-Are/master/71922
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6BucEUL1TVDW6WQ59RS3WV
Review:
“LIKE REM, popular Australian acronym took a bit of a step back after years of sustained touring, immersing themselves in relaxed studio indulgence rather than chasing schedules. The result, Welcome to Wherever You Are, is their very own Out of Time, a work of unusual diversity and confident experimentation. On material which blends styles and influences from a range of sources play with the punch of a soul band. The lyrics, of course, aren't as intriguing or exacting as REM's, but there are compensations in Michael Hutchence's greater adeptness in the ways of erotic obsession. It's their best record by some distance, bristling with pop hooks applied in odd directions.
The absence, after three hit albums, of producer Chris Thomas means it's both rawer than the usual sound, on straight- ahead rockers like the single 'Heaven Sent' and the lusty 'Taste It', and more adventurously sophisticated. A 60-piece orchestra is drafted into service for the anthemic 'Baby Don't Cry' and the moody finale 'Men and Women'. This last serves almost as a touchstone for the whole album, which finds Hutchence, notwithstanding his bona fide sex-god status, as bewildered as ever by the battle of the sexes. 'Making my own mind up,' he intones bleakly, 'When I can, I will’” – The Independent
Choice Cut: Baby Don’t Cry
The Underrated Gem
X
Release Date: 25th September, 1990
Labels: Atlantic (U.S.)/Mercury (E.U.)/WEA (Australia)
Producer: Chris Thomas
Standout Tracks: The Stairs/By My Side/Bitter Tears
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-X/master/71886
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/688l8IJXR4cmgGj0Ekl0DR
Review:
“The seventh album from Australia's INXS basically sticks to the formula set up on Kick, mixing solid remixable dancefloor beats with slightly quirky production tricks, Michael Hutchence's rough-edged, bluesy vocals, and some good solid song hooks. The most immediate numbers are, of course, the two singles, "Suicide Blonde" and "Disappear," but other tracks stand out as potential hit material as well, including the anthemic "The Stairs." The biggest problems with the album are a tendency to play it safe, sticking to the tried and true -- echoing a line in the thumping "Who Pays the Price," when Hutchence sings "it's all been felt before" -- and the fact that there's very little in the way of subtlety on the entire album. All of the songs are designed for immediate radio contact -- they don't really give you a chance to grow into them, they just grab you by the throat and start shaking. "Know the Difference," as an example, threatens to be sneaky but immediately switches to an obvious assault instead. In the finish, the overwhelming lack of subtlety and sense of sameness overcomes the album as a whole. It's not that's it's a bad album. It's just nowhere near as good as it could -- and should -- have been” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Suicide Blonde
The Final Album
Original Sin
Release Date: 16th November, 2010
Labels: Petrol Electric/Polydor (France)/Atco (U.S.)/Groove Merchants (Australia)/Epic (Canada)
Producers: Jon Farriss/James Ash/INXS
Standout Tracks: Mediate (ft. Tricky)/Beautiful Girl (ft. Pat Monahan)/Mystify (ft. Loane and John Mayer)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/INXS-Original-Sin/master/312989
Review:
“Having seen their permanent replacement, J.D. Fortune, recently fall off the rails, some might say it was time the INXS name was laid to rest. But six years after the largely ignored Switch, the Farriss brothers and co. are back with Original Sin, a star-studded tribute record featuring 12 new interpretations of some of their biggest hits. Depending on your viewpoint, the whole concept could be seen as a brave attempt to introduce some of their classic material to a new audience, or a lazy retread of former glories which cheapens the legacy of their late frontman Michael Hutchence. But whatever your stance on their post-1997 career, it's inarguably admirable just how much free reign each of the wildly eclectic collaborators are given to make these songs their own. Indeed, other than the straightforward rendition of closing number "The Stairs" (the only track to feature the aforementioned Fortune), and the impassioned, U2-esque treatment afforded to "Beautiful Girl" (featuring Train's Pat Monahan), the majority of the covers are virtually unrecognizable from the source material. This radical approach occasionally produces some surprisingly pleasing results. "Mediate," one of five tracks taken from their 1987 juggernaut Kick, is given an effectively claustrophobic makeover thanks to its warped basslines, crunching distorted guitars, and Tricky's hypnotic dark whisperings; bandmember Kirk Pengilly is unlikely to leave a dry eye in the house with his haunting and stripped-back choral reworking of early new wave single "Don't Change," and Argentine singer/songwriter Deborah DeCorral transforms the '80s funk of "New Sensation" into a gorgeous slice of understated country-blues. There are times, though, when the dream team lineup creates a nightmare. Ben Harper and Mylene Farmer's disjointed, bilingual duet "Never Tear Us Apart" is a cacophonous mess, which completely destroys the majesty of the original, French vocalist Loane and John Mayer turns the pounding piano-pop of "Mystify" into a self-indulgent slice of trippy space rock, while even Rob Thomas' best Hutchence impression can't save the misguided and formulaic, filtered, Gallic house retooling of the title track. The sole new composition, the meandering industrial electro opener "Drum Opera," indicates why the band seem so keen to revisit their past, but while Original Sin is likely to leave many hardened fans dismayed, there are a few encouraging moments which justify its addition to their cherished back catalog” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: New Sensation (ft. Deborah De Corral)
The INXS Book
INXS Story to Story: The Official Autobiography
Authors: INXS/Anthony Bozza
Publication Date: 21st October, 2005
Publisher: Bantam Press; First Edition First Printing
Synopsis:
“Now for the first time, INXS band members tell their own story about the meeting (and sometimes clashing) of minds that produced their music. In this gritty, in-depth narrative, one of the most influential bands of the last two decades reveals the truth about the way they lived: the drugs, the sex, the supermodels and the in-fighting. They also divulge everything they know about Michael Hutchence: his relationship with Paula Yates, his drug addiction and what they really think about his death. Like The Dirt, this is a book about rock 'n' roll out of control. It gives a fascinating insight into the life and death of a superstar, by the people who knew him best” – Amazon.co.uk