INXS - The Album thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Nov 19, 2020.

  1. dirkster

    dirkster Senior Member

    Location:
    McKinney, TX, USA
    Shining Star

    Well, I like it. The bass line carries the song for me, and the insistent bass line can get stuck in my brain for entire mornings - so it must be good. The vocals are a bit like a gospel preacher improvising off a theme. It may be repetitious but I don’t mind it all all that this song may have thrown together quickly in a free half-day during a busy tour. I’m a sucker for that 1970’s phasing sound that appears twice in the song too. I guess I like this song as a one-off because it feels “loose”, as opposed to safe and calculated.

    INXS rejoin with producer Mark Opitz (previously of Shaboooh Shoobah) with this song and that’s noteworthy because they went on to make the next two albums together, one of which many people call the best of their career.
     
  2. Moggio_4K_Ultra_HD

    Moggio_4K_Ultra_HD Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC
  3. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Welcome to Wherever You Are

    [​IMG]
    Studio album by
    INXS
    Released
    3 August 1992
    Recorded 1991–1992
    Studio Rhinoceros Recordings, Sydney, Australia
    Genre Alternative rock, pop rock
    Length 45:49
    Label Atlantic US
    Mercury Records EU
    East West Records
    Producer Mark Opitz, INXS

    Welcome to Wherever You Are is the eighth album by the Australian rock band INXS, which was released on 3 August 1992. With grunge and alternative music breaking into the mainstream, INXS tried to establish a new direction for itself, incorporating sitars, a 60-piece orchestra, and a much more "raw" sound to their music. In its four star review of the album, Q called it "... a far more engaging and heartfelt collection than anything the group has put out in recent memory ... It rocks," and listed it as one of the 50 Best Albums of 1992. It was the first album by an Australian artist to debut on the UK album chart at number one since AC/DC's "Back in Black".

    Despite the positive critical reception, along with the album charting well on most countries' respective album charts (including topping the UK album charts and reaching number two in Australia), the album marked a commercial decline for the band, especially in the United States, where the album only peaked at number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The commercial decline was partially due to the lack of promotion by their label and changing musical tastes towards grunge and alternative. The band also elected to take a break and not tour in support of the album. The plan was that the band would instead record the follow-up (which went on to become 1993's Full Moon, Dirty Hearts) and then tour in support of both albums. However, the plan made it so that Welcome to Wherever You Are faded from press and public attention quicker, meaning the record failed to match the success of INXS's two previous albums, Kick and X.

    While the single "Baby Don't Cry" was a Top 20 hit in the UK, the album's biggest American hit was "Not Enough Time", which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and stayed there for five consecutive weeks.

    Additional musicians
    • Australian Concert Orchestra – "Baby Don't Cry" and "Men and Woman"
    • Deni Hinesbacking vocals on "Not Enough Time" and "Strange Desire"
    • Sunil De Silva – percussion on "Not Enough Time"
    Additional personnel
    • Mark Opitz – producer
    • INXS – producer
    • Bob Clearmountain – mixing
    • Niven Garland – engineer
    • Melissa Van Twest – assistant engineer
    • Neil Sandbach – orchestral engineer
    • Colin Piper – conductor
    • Mick Kenny and Andrew Farriss – orchestral arrangements on "Baby Don't Cry" "Men and Women"
    • Leon Zervos – mastering
    • Chris Murphy – management
    • Steve Pyke – cover photography
    • Peggy Sirota – photography
    • Michael Nash Assoc. – design
    1. "Questions" Andrew Farriss 2:19
    2. "Heaven Sent" A. Farriss 3:18
    3. "Communication" 5:29
    4. "Taste It" 3:27
    5. "Not Enough Time" 4:26
    6. "All Around" 3:30
    7. "Baby Don't Cry" A. Farriss 4:57
    8. "Beautiful Girl" A. Farriss 3:33
    9. "Wishing Well" 3:40
    10. "Back on Line" Jon Farriss, Hutchence 3:24
    11. "Strange Desire" 4:39
    12. "Men and Women" Hutchence 4:38

    Charts
    Chart (1992-1993) Peak
    position

    Australian Albums (ARIA)[32] 2
    Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[38] 18
    Canadian Albums (RPM)[36] 10
    Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[39] 35
    French Albums (SNEP)[40] 31
    German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[29] 8
    New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[34] 8
    Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[28] 3
    Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[26] 1
    Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[27] 2
    UK Albums (OCC)[24] 1
    US Billboard 200[41] 16


    Certifications
    Region Certification Certified units/sales
    Australia (ARIA)[33]
    Gold 35,000^
    Canada (Music Canada)[37] Gold 50,000^
    Sweden (GLF)[30] Gold 50,000^
    Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)[31] Gold 25,000^
    United Kingdom (BPI)[25] Gold 100,000^
    United States (RIAA)[35] Platinum 1,000,000^
    Summaries
    Worldwide (IFPI)
    N/A 2,000,000[18]
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    The music industry is a strange finicky business, and often the ever changing fashion world has more impact than the music itself.
    I think it's safe to say that Inxs made a couple of bad decisions over a couple of years that didn't help their cause, but the band had been tied to the eighties pop world, and many of the eighties pop bands didn't really thrive into the nineties .... just as the decade before, many of the seventies bands had not really coped with the changes of the eighties too well.

    To some degree I think the somewhat play it safe mode of X hindered their forward movement. I think the live album and Wembley show also played it too safe. Stacking the concert movie with tracks off the two big albums may seem sensible in some ways, but it shows a lack of faith in the back catalog. The album version is just a little sterile, and the single should have been left on the cutting room floor, and perhaps fished out, or reworked for the next studio project. It somewhat seems like an act of desperation to try and keep the brand in the spotlight, after a slightly disappointing sales result from the X album, and as it wasn't exactly the strongest of singles, it leaves a poor impression behind..... to some degree.

    I think Welcome To Wherever You are is a solid album that could have seen a big resurgence in the bands fortunes, but I think it needed to be a couple of albums earlier, in light of the timing.
    For me Grunge didn't really mean much, it was just a return to some harder edged rock after the softening of the late eighties, but it was propelled by the fashion industry as something new and fresh, and it captured the imagination of youths around the world, who obviously just didn't really know about music pre-eighties or something, because the majority was based in minor alterations to seventies rock and hard rock. I'm not knocking it, I have many of the albums and enjoy them a lot, I just didn't see it as the major change up that it was advertised and sold as.
    As a result, a lot of bands suffered from a backlash of being tied to the late eighties pop world, and subsequently slid out of sight, some for a while, and some for ever.

    A few bands managed to get ahead of the change, and hold onto their status, but unfortunately Inxs probably missed the mark by a year, and perhaps Kick had seemed like a one off to too many of the public, and it was seen as a fluke or something ... it is always hard to tell with the industry, but the band will seem to be forever tied to one album for the majority of the world, and to me that is fairly tragic, because I don't even think it is their best album .....

    [​IMG][​IMG]
    [​IMG][​IMG]

    To be honest, I don't think the album cover idea worked particularly well ... Who are these kids on the album cover, and what on earth have they got to do with the band .... and what does the title mean in relation to these kids.
    I think they would been have better to go with the band version of the album cover.
    Hindsight is 20/20, but the rock world was simplifying, and by the time the band was releasing the album, it should have been fairly well known that this was the direction, but the band decided to go with a slightly artsy idea, and it just wasn't the time. There was a cry for authenticity from musicians, after the sonic experiments and the fashion extravaganza that was the eighties, and it all just didn't quite grab the attention the way it needed to.
    The most well known cover of the album features the Artane Boys Band from Ireland....

    So from a fashion perspective the boys were instantly on the back foot, but what about the album......

    I have been listening to this album for a few weeks now, and I really like this album. I think it is a solid return to form. I also think time will look back fondly on this album, and already, about thirty years on, it seems many look back on this album fondly .... but there were so many subtle little errors in judgement ...
    It was decided that the band wouldn't tour the album. The band wasn't on the cover of the album...... and the results seem to be that in time only the most hard core of Inxs fans grabbed it at the time. It certainly didn't bomb. It actually did reasonably well, but it didn't hang around in the charts, and it didn't become one of those albums that stuck in the minds of the general public, and I think it is a lot of the cumulative factors that led to that situation.
    So instead of touring this album, the band went back to the studio to give the world a quick follow up .... and the timing and circumstances just shot a hole in the Inxs boat, and they never really recovered from it ....

    As I say though this is a very good album. I think the songs are strong. I think the writing is good. Although Mark Opitz is an excellent producer, one thing that stands out to me at this stage, and I will have to really consider this as we go through the songs, we have a lot of vocal effects that may not have been the best way to go about this album.... but at this stage I'm not sure, and still thinking about it .....

    One thing that I think was a great choice was the lead single. I think it captured a harder edge to the band, and it is a great song, and it did pretty well .... but it should have done better ... and perhaps the relative failure of such a good lead single, with such a solid rock sound was the writing on the wall here .... I don't know.... as I say the music world is a strange place and what seems logical often isn't ....

    Anyway, I am looking forward to going through the songs here, because I think this is a very strong album, and hopefully if there is an Inxs renaissance at some point, this album will be reconsidered by the masses as the solid piece of work that it is.

    Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I may be completely off the mark, but from the outside looking in that is what it all looks like to me.

    Please give us your thoughts and feelings on this album, and the times, and anything that captures your imagination regarding all this.
    What did you think of this album at the time?
    What do you think of it now?
    All that kind of thing.

    Cheers
    Mark
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2021
  4. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  5. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  6. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  7. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  8. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  9. Bluepicasso

    Bluepicasso Android Confused

    Location:
    Arlington, Va
    Welcome to Wherever You Are - 5/5 album. Glad they went back to Mark Optiz as I felt he was the band's best producer, knew how to balance the sound. The only song that rubs me the wrong way is "Baby Don't Cry". The rest is pure sonic opium. For the cover, they should have went with the third image you have above. I'm sure the uniformed kids made people pass on it -- bad decision really, but perhaps that is what they wanted. They should have toured the album, and perhaps Michael would have missed that incident he had a result, but it's all "looking back". In the end, they delivered a great album that is the third in line to me of their best work behind the 3rd and 4th albums. My ranking at this point:

    Shabooh
    The Swing
    Welcome to Wherever
    Kick
    Listen Like Thieves
    X
    Underneath the Colours
    INXS
     
  10. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  11. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  12. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Wasn't the "Get Out of the House" club tour in support of this album?

    I've told the story on this board before of walking into my record shop and being blindsided by the appearance of WTWYA. Atlantic really dropped the ball in terms of advance hype in the U.S.

    As for the music itself, I like the album a lot. In a way it's greater than the sum of its parts, since IMO there are only a handful of great standalone songs. The second side in particular is a really intriguing run of interesting songs (Back On Line, Strange Desire, etc.). Now that I think about it, all the album side openers and closers are the weakest songs on here.

    Good call by Mark on the album art. I like it as a departure but I agree it was probably confusing rather than enticing to the average listener.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2021
  13. Interpolantics

    Interpolantics Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ireland
    This is where I hopped on the INXS train :)

    I remember the album release very clearly with Heaven Sent getting a good amount of airplay on MTV.

    As was mentioned above there are quite a few effects added to the vocals on this album and I seem to recall Mark Opitz saying in an interview that Hutchence pushed for the more distorted sound on the lead single.

    As far as the artwork is concerned I completely get why it is now seen as something of a mistake. I think the band and Hutchence had their image nailed during this period so it was a missed opportunity not to have it front and centre. That said I actually quite like the concept of three separate covers for three different formats (the LP cover in particular is horrible though). I think it fits in with the album being something of an artistic statement. Looking back perhaps they were influenced by the abstract nature of the Nevermind album cover?
     
  14. Al Gator

    Al Gator You can call me Al

    I must admit that Welcome to Wherever You Are passed me by on its release. I don’t remember hearing much on the radio (and I was largely past my radio-listening days anyway). A couple of less than stellar albums had brought the band back to earth, and I don’t think the cover art helped things - they may call it arty, but I’d call it terrible. I can think of many arty album covers, and this isn’t one.

    But I’ve since discovered the album’s music, and there’s a heck of a lot to love here. In fact, while it’s a totally different beast, I’d place it at the level of Kick (although there’s one song here that I really dislike).

    There are a lot of treatments here, and while it takes more of a background part here, the sax parts really bring atmosphere where it’s needed. The songs often run into each other without a gap, and listening to the whole album (instead of individual songs) brings a more complete experience. A couple of recent focused listens really brought this album’s brilliance home to me. And it’s another superb-sounding album, audiophile quality.
     
  15. dirkster

    dirkster Senior Member

    Location:
    McKinney, TX, USA
    Welcome To Wherever You Are

    From the first moment I heard “Not Enough Time” on K-Nack in Austin I knew INXS was “back”. To this day, I fumble around trying to open the weird eco-pac this album is housed in instead of the standard jewel case, but the artwork didn’t throw me off. I’m an REM fan so I’m used to crappy album art (Out Of Time, Life’s Rich Pageant) mixed with brilliant art (Murmur, Reckoning). I agree that a band photo might have been a better choice.

    Almost all the songs on this album seque into each other. I love it when INXS do this, and they do it for pretty much the entire album this time out. I love this album from start to finish, and it has a real flow to it. At this point in 1992 bands were starting to stretch out album lengths to fill 80-min CD’s instead of the standard 35-40 minutes for LP’s, and less attention was being paid to an album-length flow in the tracklisting, as most just ended up being top loaded with the singles, so on WTWYA the excellent sequencing is like a “secret weapon”.

    WTWYA gets compared a lot to U2’s Achtung Baby and I’ve never really understood that, except in the one respect: both have an excellent tracklist that pulls you in and makes you want to hear the whole thing each time you listen.

    80’s bands were indeed having trouble transitioning into the 90’s, but on this album I hear INXS updating their sound a bit. Not a reinvention, but the drum sounds are a welcome change for sure. Also, after leaving off some of the more rock-oriented guitar tunes from their previous two albums, WTWYA starts off with the Indian-flavored Questions that jump-cuts into Heaven Sent. The juxtaposition of these two songs, compared to their standard approach on X, really does a great job of setting the table for the listener, letting them know that this album will be something “different”.

    I think WTWYA is overrated with respect to how much of a “change” it really represents for INXS. I hear the same band here that I’ve heard on every other album. I don’t hear a dramatic reinvention, but what I do hear is a dramatic re-invigoration. They really bring the goods here and deliver one-great song after another, and they sound fresh instead of calculated and safe. The album was disappointing in terms of sales, but it still sold well: just not astronomically.
     
  16. Al Gator

    Al Gator You can call me Al

    That's a great way to put it.
     
  17. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    I think it's an oversimplification to blame the commercial "failure" of this album on grunge. If you look at the top 100 singles from 1992, there's a ton of dance and R&B on there. Plenty of 80's acts too. While an ok album it lacked a single to breakthrough at American radio. After the disappointment of X and the live album, they really needed to come out swinging and deliver a knockout blow.
     
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  18. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    As I say, to me, grunge was just one factor of many
     
  19. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Well, not to jump ahead to individual songs but "Beautiful Girl" is their 4th most-streamed song on Spotify, ahead of many other songs I would consider INXS classics. A weird, slow-burn hit of sorts.
     
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  20. dirkster

    dirkster Senior Member

    Location:
    McKinney, TX, USA
    Not touring the album was the thing that hurt it. Without a big tour to help promote airplay for the singles, they came and went faster than otherwise. “Not Enough Time” is one of the best things they ever wrote, and the album is plenty deep with more great songs.
     
  21. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    Agreed 100%. Looking back 30 years later I don't know what the band could have done differently to have made this more successful. If they leaned too far into dance and pop they get accused of making another album that sounds like Kick. They go too far rock and they get accused of trying to join the grunge bandwagon. While fellow 80's hit makers Bryan Adams and Def Leppard landed singles on the year ending Billboard top 100 singles chart, they were all ballads. Beautiful Girl never even managed to crack the top 40 and I prefer it to the dreck those other two acts were successful with. The public is a fickle son of a beast.
     
  22. dirkster

    dirkster Senior Member

    Location:
    McKinney, TX, USA
    Yeah, I was watching a trailer for some 2000’s movie the other day and “Beautiful Girl” popped up randomly as the featured song. That one still gets a lot of play.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2021
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  23. twicks

    twicks Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    How do you explain R.E.M.'s success with Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, though?
     
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  24. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    And yet in America it topped out at 46 on the Top 100 singles chart.
     
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  25. dirkster

    dirkster Senior Member

    Location:
    McKinney, TX, USA
    it worked out ok for REM, but I think the fact that they still did a lot of radio and TV appearances helped them. They even did a version of Shiny Happy People on Sesame Street.
     
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