1987’s ‘Kick’ may have been their greatest success and the quintessential INXS long player, but by 1992 Grunge and Indie were ‘in’ and INXS were seen as outdated and passe. That this album, their true masterpiece, was not nearly as successful is not surprising given the musical climate at the time but this album is an absolute peach from start to finish, their most diverse, experimental and consistent album by some margin…
From the snake charming opening bars of first track ‘Questions’ we are ushered into a very different experience from the usual rock-funk formula they had perfected, refined and over laboured by this point, and it is certainly an audacious opener, full of tabla, sitar and an eerie chord sequence which without pause for breath, bleeds straight into second track ‘Heaven Sent’ which is the punkiest freshest thing they ever did… This in turn bleeds into ‘Communication’ and the album establishes itself as an Aussie Rock Screamadelica, To name a few highlights, There’s sinewy bass heavy dance on ‘Taste It’ and ‘Wishing Well’, huge massed choruses on ‘Baby Don’t Cry’, Lou Reed on the gorgeously understated ‘Beautiful Girl’ and the incredibly dark closing track, ‘Men And Women’ which would make a great end to a career last-song-on-the-last-album kind of song which is apt because if they had made this their last album it would be a fitting epitaph to their career with not a single filler track in sight (Even Kick had a couple, admit it!)
As it was, they stumbled on for a few more, mostly mediocre and pitifully poor albums before Hutchence’s suicide in 1997 but this is an album that I have dug out again recently, and it sounds every bit as fresh and exciting as it did then. Out of time but certainly not out of ideas, this was INXS at their true peak, artistically questing and unafraid of change which made the later volte-face with the following albums all the more baffling.
R.I.P. Michael Hutchence, your legacy remains alive, well and relevant…
