INXS: Elegantly Wasted

Thanks to changing commercial tides and anemic promotional efforts, INXS seems to have fallen off the face of the pop world, despite the fact that Michael Hutchence and company have been regularly cranking out albums since their '80s heyday. A label switch has generated talk of a comeback, but the new Elegantly Wasted doesn't offer much evidence to back that up: With the exception of a few obvious radio singles, particularly the fun title track, most of the record is mired in dreary mid-tempo material ("Searching," "Everything") that sounds exactly like the INXS of old, yet lacks the swaggering catchiness. INXS is often likened to a poor man's U2—the Australian band has always sounded sort of like U2 might if it cared about sex and glamour rather than love and war—but INXS lacks U2's well-publicized ability to evolve as the times change. Consequently, Elegantly Wasted sounds less like a comeback than an underwhelming nostalgia trip.