INXS - Kick - Vinyl Record LP *

Containing every single essential element of a timeless modern pop album, Kick by INXS - Vinyl Record LP features the seductive vocals of Michael Hutchence and the lively drum work of Jon Farriss (recorded in analog). This 12-track masterpiece seamlessly blends together dance beats, rock riffs, catchy hooks, R&B influences and orchestral accents for a captivating and ever-appealing sound that defies the formulaic and superficial trends of its time.

Above all, every song boasts a different feel and distinctive pace, characteristics that aren't forced but natural results of the collective's chemistry. The sexy, breathy pop-funk "Need You Tonight" clicks with interlocking arrangements and murmured vocals. The atmospheric, synth-drum-punctuated "Meditate" hallucinates with stream-of-conscious vocals and percolating grooves. Well-placed pauses, hypnotic flanged guitar passages, and so-funky-you'll-sweat saxophone breaks pepper the liberating rock smash "New Sensation."

INXS also kicks out upbeat dance-inflected jams on the brassy skirt-swaying title track, syncopated "Calling All Nations," and elsewhere, but doesn't forget the importance of a bleeding-heart ballad. Hence, the devastatingly moving "Never Tear Us Apart," the knifing strings and guitar twang proving dramatic, direct, and honest. The late 1980s produced a handful of more commercially successful pop records, but none is better than the timeless Kick.

1. Guns in the Sky
2. New Sensation
3. Devil Inside
4. Need You Tonight
5. Mediate
6. The Loved One
7. Wild Life
8. Never Tear Us Apart
9. Mystify
10. Kick
11. Calling All Nations
12. Tiny Daggers