CD Odyssey Disc 362: INXS

When left to my own devices, I will sometimes get into a genre of music and explore it to the utmost. Over the years, I've had deep and meaningful relationships with metal, folk, swing, punk and seventies rock, and dalliances with a host of others.

Because of its random nature, the CD Odyssey prevents me from doing that, which I sometimes regret. However, by mixing all of my past loves together it keeps me engaged with all my musical interests at once, which I think I prefer.

Case in point the last couple of albums, a neo-disco record and this next one - classic eighties pop. Neither one that I would feel like seeking out right now on my own, but both of which I enjoyed once I gave them a bit of my time.

Disc 362 is...The Swing

Artist: INXS

Year of Release: 1984

What’s Up With The Cover?: A low budget? Seriously, this cover looks like a high school art project from a/v class. I do like the use of slides, which are so anachronistic in the modern digital age. Kind of like the haircuts on the INXS guys pictured - yikes. Also, do you think they could've put a little effort into looking in the same direction? This must be what passes for cool detachment in the day.

How I Came To Know It: I have known INXS since high school, but I didn't know "The Swing" until I met Sheila and she introduced me to it. This is her album, and one that she has sworn by over the years.

How It Stacks Up: We have three INXS albums. Of the three, I'd put "The Swing" as my least favourite, behind both "X" and "Listen Like Thieves" (the latter reviewed back at Disc 292).

Rating: 3 stars.

When I rolled this album for my next review I kept up a brave face, but I secretly dreaded it. Sheila loves this album, but I've never found it in my wheelhouse. It is very New Wave and heavily eighties. The only time it usually gets into the mix in our house is when Sheila picks it.

When I first started listening to it, I found it actively annoying, but in retrospect this wasn't because of the music, it was because of the context. I heard the first four songs driving to see the doctor for some tests, and then racing traffic to get back to work after the trip to the doctor took longer than expected. I hate going to the doctor. (FYI, I'm going to be fine - just checking on some minor stomach pains, so no get-well cards necessary).

However, once I gave the album my full attention on my walk to work, I found I had judged it too harshly. "The Swing" is one of those records that is not well known, but is all the more interesting for its lack of commercial success. (It was number 1 in Australia, but only got to #52 in North America with one minor chart success in Canada: the single, "Original Sin.")

It is a very dance-heavy album, and if you were of an age to party in Sydney back in 1984, songs off of "The Swing" likely got heavy airplay. The Farriss brothers can write a catchy lick, and while eighties dancing seems silly to us now, in the day this record would make you want to move. In fact, it still made me want to move, but that was just my age showing.

The accompanying eighties production distanced my emotional connection to it, however. I'm not a fan of the drum machine, and the very bad synth hook on "Burn For You" wrecks what is otherwise a promising song. I found myself thinking of the interesting expirements Tom Waits was doing with percussion around the same time ("Swordfishtrombone", "Rain Dogs") and wishing INXS had tried something along those lines. Still, not everyone has Tom Waits' brilliance. The fact that I even thought of INXS in the same sentence demonstrates they were showing something.

"The Swing" has a pop brilliance to it. Sparse and edgy, it has some rough edges that would be smoothed away by their next record, "Listen Like Thieves," but it is these rough edges that give it its charm and unique sound. On "All The Voices" the music sounds almost tribal and "Johnson's Aeroplane" captures some of the same catchy-yet-distant quality of some Cure songs like "A Forest" or "The Hanging Garden."

Also "Johnson's Aeroplane" scores bonus points for spelling airplane in that cool old-fashioned way. I'd like to see that spelling return as the default. People could eruditely ask one another questions like, "how are you traveling on your holiday - motorcar or aeroplane?" Such convesations should ideally be held among middle-aged dowager ladies with mid-Atlantic accents and broad-brimmed hats tied down with a broad scarf. But I digress...

Back to the album, which benefits greatly not only from the ability of INXS to write a memorable pop lick, but also the deep, back-of-the-throat eighties voice of Michael Hutchence. Hutchence doesn't always get the credit he deserves as a vocalist, likely because INXS doesn't do a lot of songs that force him to belt it out over multiple octaves, but the band isn't the same without him. Like Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath, Hutchence knows his role, singing along with the beat, and never leaving the rest of the song behind.

Lyrically, "The Swing" features a lot of themes around tolerance and acceptance, notably "Original Sin" and "Face The Change" and the anti-war song, "Dancing On The Jetty." None of their lyrics are particularly deep, but there are a lot of worse things to sing about.

This album crept up on me over the last couple of days, and I got a new appreciation for it. It didn't change my life or anything, but the music was interesting, innovative in places and on more than one occasion it made me tap my feet. I'm actually looking forward to the next time it goes into rotation on our CD player.

Best tracks: Original Sin, Dancing On The Jetty, Johnson's Aeroplane, Love Is (What I Say)