It Ain't Pretty After the Show

INXS was one of my favorite bands of the 80’s. But like many bands from the era, the transition to the 90’s were not a smooth one and was brought to a screaming halt with the death of lead singer Michael Hutchence in 1997. So now in 2005, what is the band to do, well exactly what every washed up 80’s celebrity does, get its own realist show. So in American Karaoke fashion, the voting public would tune in every week, voting off the worse karaoker until they crown the winner how would spend the rest of his life singing Need You Tonight while everyone in the audiences wished Hutchence was still alive.

But much in the Rolling Stones tradition of releasing a new album before the new tour even though everyone would much rather hear Jumpin' Jack Flash than any of the new material, INXS pumped out an album, Switch, featuring their karaoke winner just weeks after the end of the show. And it is easy to tell that the recording of the album was rushed as all the songs slug along as if an INXS cover tried to record their own material. The album starts off with Devil’s Party which the band tries to recreate their classic Devil Inside but fails miserably.

The closest the band gets to its past glory is Afterglow, a slowed down song that could have benefited from a singer that could handle the delicate cadence, but ruins the song whenever he tries to hard. He just can’t handle the subtleties that Hutchence was so good at. But instead the karaoke champion can’t decide throughout the album rather he should channel Hutchence or find his own voice and ends up failing at both. And the karaoker isn’t all to blame as even Hutchence couldn’t have save such bland songs as Hot Girls, Perfect Strangers, and God’s Top 10.

Song to Download – Don’t Bother, just pick something from their back catalog instead (check out my recommendations)

Switch gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.