If there was one moment I’d have to name that was the beginning
\nof the end for INXS, it was when some critics considered their 1990
\nrelease
\nX<\/i> to be a moderate failure.<\/p>\n
Okay, before you pick up your keyboards to start flaming me,
\nnote that I didn’t call the album a failure. In fact, this might be
\none of INXS’s least appreciated albums. Coming off the smashing
\nsuccess of albums like
\nListen Like Thieves<\/i> and
\nKick<\/i>, the expectations from Michael Hutchence and crew were
\nsky-high. It would be hard to live up to the pressure to release an
\nalbum on the same level as the previous two.<\/p>\n
So, in the eyes of the industry, INXS was fighting a losing
\nbattle – and that’s a shame, because musically,
\nX<\/i> is very much a more cohesive work than
\nKick<\/i> was. True, it might have been a bit formula-heavy, but
\nas long as Hutchence, the brothers Farriss and crew could make it
\nwork, so much the better.<\/p>\n
Of the eleven tracks on this album, “Suicide Blonde” might be
\nthe best-known. (Funny, I always thought Charlie Musselwhite
\nprovided the harmonica work on this track.) However, it is not the
\nbest work on the album – and perhaps because this is the first
\nthing off
\nX<\/i> that many people heard thanks to radio, they were quick to
\njudge the rest of the album in a negative light.<\/p>\n
Thing is, if you immediately wrote off the album, you missed
\nsome solid rock and roll. Tracks like “Disappear” and “Bitter
\nTears” also got significant airplay, “Bitter Tears” being a great
\ntrack that was underappreciated by many. But the real story might
\nhave been some of the music that didn’t get radio attention. “The
\nStairs” is a track that takes some time to build up into a musical
\ncrescendo, but it’s very much worth the time to listen to.
\nLikewise, “Lately” is a powerful track with the catchy chorus that
\nsucks me in every time that I listen to it. For that matter, the
\nwhole second half of
\nX<\/i> is some of INXS’s strongest work of their career that I
\ncan recall at the moment of writing this review.<\/p>\n
So what do I mean by “formula”? Simple: on almost every INXS
\nsong, there is a guitar riff that the work is based on, and the
\nguitars all have a certain “jangle” to them, not entirely unlike
\nThe Edge of U2’s playing style in the mid-’80s. Unpleasant? Hardly,
\nalthough after a while, you do find yourself wondering if the band
\ncan do anything a bit richer. (The one weak note I’d mention now:
\n“By My Side” sounds like a reformatting of “Never Tear Us Apart,”
\nonly with a slightly harder edge to it.)<\/p>\n
Is
\nX<\/i> the commercial flop that we’ve been led to believe it is?
\nNot a chance. In fact, this could be the one INXS album that is
\nworth dusting off and rediscovering in between bowl games today.
\nAfter a few listens to
\nX<\/i>, it makes me feel worse not only that Hutchence isn’t with
\nus anymore (having committed suicide in 1997), but that INXS really
\nweren’t appreciated when things started to click musically for
\nthem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5934],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-36142","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-inxs","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36142"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36142"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}