Sound Bite

INXS' newest more than 'Elegantly' average

The 17-year-old group turns out another quality release with catchy dance songs and heart wrenching ballads

By Keith Caulfield
Features Editor

INXS
Elegantly Wasted
(Mercury)

On INXS' 10th studio album, Elegantly Wasted, the band throws no curveballs. The group churns out the same good ol' rock `n' roll that they've been known for over 15 years.
Since their breakthrough success with 1987's Kick, the band has been trying to follow up an album that can never be topped (see the debuts of groups like Guns N' Roses, Hootie & The Blowfish, etc.). It doesn't matter how good or bad the follow ups are, it is guaranteed by some unwritten music bylaw that you can never top your last big album.
The band did come back briefly with 1990's X, which featured the fairly memorable, if not wholly traditional INXS, tracks "Suicide Blonde" and "Disappear." Following a live album (1991's Live Baby Live) INXS turned out what is easily their most experimental and best album to date, 1992's Welcome to Wherever You Are.
Though it was severely underappreciated, both critically (for the most part) and commercially, it sent out a signal loud and clear to the band: don't mess with a good thing, otherwise it won't sell a bloody album. Welcome barely registered on the album charts and spawned no big hit singles--despite the fairly warm reception to tracks like "Beautiful Girl" and "Not Enough Time."
Following the tame sales of Welcome, INXS turned out two perfunctory albums, Full Moon Dirty Hearts (forgettable with the exception of a track or two) and its Greatest Hits--the bands last album with Atlantic records before shuffling over to Mercury.
Their label move is an important one to note, as since joining up with Mercury, INXS has either suddenly had some major surges in their creativity or else they've been holding out on us for the past five years.
On the whole, Elegantly Wasted is the best thing the band has put out since Welcome to Wherever You Are, but considering since 1993, the band has only released one studio album, flaunting the fact that the best thing they've done in years really isn't that big of a deal.
The title track gets into a deep groove that INXS hasn't seen in a good long while. INXS is remarkable when it comes to blending severely catchy pop hooks with a high danceability quotient. In addition, the familiar swelling chorus takes control in the song as well. The no-brainier "sing-a-long" chorus of I'm...elegantly wasted's (which sounds oddly like I'm gonna get wasted) ends up as the centerpiece of the song.
INXS always evenly balances its albums with a nice blend of rocking tunes that are primed for a loud club, and the plodding ballad or two. Oftentimes, as with a few tracks on Elegantly Wasted, the balladry becomes a bit tedious, making the desire for a few more uptempo tracks all the more fervent.
Lead singer and co-songwriter Michael Hutchence falls prey to some formulaic writing patterns. Of course, after as long as he has been at it, one is allowed to be uncreative every so often. On the occasional track or two, he'll pull off the "verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, repeat verse 1, chorus, chorus, chorus, fade" trick. Now, either he really felt that the first verse was completely amazing, or he just had nothing else to say. This recipe is evident in the sometimes Elvis-in-Vegas sounding "Girl On Fire." Here's a sample lyric: I just landed / Girl on fire / I felt the heat / From Sydney to London / Well she shut my mouth / With the repartee / Opened hers with the rest of me / Girl on fire/ Baby burn burn burn / Girl on fire / Baby burn burn burn.
As usual, Hutchence's lyrics are ambiguous enough as to where anyone could interpret pretty much anything they want to out of a song. But you kind of ignore the fact that the lyrics don't always make complete sense, as the music is usually quite dead-on. The band never misses a beat (pardon the pun) and executes nearly everything with their normal INXS style. B