5 keepers
keeper avg .416
In a year populated by career-defining albums by George Michael, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, Guns 'n' Roses, Aerosmith, and a prolifically-selling album by the "King of Pop," a little Aussie band released the #4 album of the year. INXS had some success with the previous album "Listen Like Thieves," but with an incredible four top 10 singles (and Mainstream Rock single "Mystify") "Kick" would be their commercial and probably creative peak; not really benefitting from any of the major trends of the time, namely ostentatious ballads and pop-metal, instead it can be considered the last hurrah of both new wave and the 70's bar band. So surely the fact that I pretty much wore out my tape makes me qualified to weigh in.
While "Guns in the Sky" is topical and begins the album in blistering fashion, its two-note palate (for the vast majority of the song) is repetitive and however spirited, Michael Hutchence's vocal comes off as half-baked in places (interestingly, the song is credited solely to Hutchence). However, after that comes a gauntlet of singles, as Andrew Farriss's effervescent sus-chord riff drives the poppiest song on the album, "New Sensation"*****, followed by the kinetic but enticing new wave-y "Devil Inside"*****, flavored with Kirk Pengilly's alternately slippery and structured guitar leads. But it was the album's first single "Need You Tonight"**** that set INXS on the path to superstardom, hitting number one in the US. While Andrew Farriss's provocative, minimalist arrangement dominated by his punchy guitar riff, Michael Hutchence's breathy vocal, and highly syncopated rimshot surely owes a big debt to quirky songs like "When Doves Cry" and "Jack And Diane," I can't think of another song that sounds anything like it. "Mediate," situated as a kind of coda to "Need You Tonight," seemed interesting at the time but is retrospectively a gimmicky throwaway homage to Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and it's where the album starts to sag. In memorial to their bar-band roots there's a bombastic cover of the (almost) eponymously-named "The Loved One" (1966, The Loved Ones) and the tepid, clunky rocker "Wild Life."
But Hutchence and Farriss have a couple more tricks up their sleeve. Ballads weren't really their thing, but their ambitions paid off with "Never Tear Us Apart," which is poignant without being sappy, maudlin, or grandiose (and was the album's fourth top 10 single). Then there's my dark horse favorite "Mystify"****, which doesn't let up from Andrew Farriss's swaggering opening piano shuffle (and made the top 20 on the US Mainstream Rock chart). The three closing tracks don't break any new ground, as "Kick" is nearly a clone of "Good Times," their 1987 hit with Jimmy Barnes, and "Calling All Nations" is pleasantly good time-y but unremarkable. Likewise for the peppy little love song "Tiny Daggers"****, though damned if it isn't catchy as hell. It's hard to say what the best song on "Kick" is as all the singles are significantly different from each other, and as I suggested before, while being unapologetically poppy they stood out from the popular music landscape at the time. Though in retrospect no album from one's youth is as consistently excellent as one remembers, Hutchence and Farriss hit it out of the park with a lot of this one, and I don't think I'm in any minority in my opinion that "Kick" has aged well.
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