Published on Jan 1, 1999
If there was one moment I’d have to name that was the beginning
of the end for INXS, it was when some critics considered their 1990
release
X to be a moderate failure.
Okay, before you pick up your keyboards to start flaming me,
note that I didn’t call the album a failure. In fact, this might be
one of INXS’s least appreciated albums. Coming off the smashing
success of albums like
Listen Like Thieves and
Kick, the expectations from Michael Hutchence and crew were
sky-high. It would be hard to live up to the pressure to release an
album on the same level as the previous two.
So, in the eyes of the industry, INXS was fighting a losing
battle – and that’s a shame, because musically,
X is very much a more cohesive work than
Kick was. True, it might have been a bit formula-heavy, but
as long as Hutchence, the brothers Farriss and crew could make it
work, so much the better.
Of the eleven tracks on this album, “Suicide Blonde” might be
the best-known. (Funny, I always thought Charlie Musselwhite
provided the harmonica work on this track.) However, it is not the
best work on the album – and perhaps because this is the first
thing off
X that many people heard thanks to radio, they were quick to
judge the rest of the album in a negative light.
Thing is, if you immediately wrote off the album, you missed
some solid rock and roll. Tracks like “Disappear” and “Bitter
Tears” also got significant airplay, “Bitter Tears” being a great
track that was underappreciated by many. But the real story might
have been some of the music that didn’t get radio attention. “The
Stairs” is a track that takes some time to build up into a musical
crescendo, but it’s very much worth the time to listen to.
Likewise, “Lately” is a powerful track with the catchy chorus that
sucks me in every time that I listen to it. For that matter, the
whole second half of
X is some of INXS’s strongest work of their career that I
can recall at the moment of writing this review.
So what do I mean by “formula”? Simple: on almost every INXS
song, there is a guitar riff that the work is based on, and the
guitars all have a certain “jangle” to them, not entirely unlike
The Edge of U2’s playing style in the mid-’80s. Unpleasant? Hardly,
although after a while, you do find yourself wondering if the band
can do anything a bit richer. (The one weak note I’d mention now:
“By My Side” sounds like a reformatting of “Never Tear Us Apart,”
only with a slightly harder edge to it.)
Is
X the commercial flop that we’ve been led to believe it is?
Not a chance. In fact, this could be the one INXS album that is
worth dusting off and rediscovering in between bowl games today.
After a few listens to
X, it makes me feel worse not only that Hutchence isn’t with
us anymore (having committed suicide in 1997), but that INXS really
weren’t appreciated when things started to click musically for
them.