Switch (2005)

Switch (2005)

In 2005, after spending the years since Michael Hutchence’s 1997 death performing here and there with one-off guest singers, the remaining members of INXS went on the CBS reality show Rock Star: INXS to audition new singers. It was a very specific American Idol, with Dave Navarro co-hosting to provide cachet and make the whole spectacle that much more depressing. The winner ended up being Canadian J.D. Fortune, who does a very good impression of the snarl that Hutchence perfected but lacks an authentic roughness, like most who are capable of performing well on singing competition shows.

Still, Andrew Farriss is writing most of the music, so it is an INXS album in the mold of their older work. But one certainly gets the sense that taking eight years off made him a bit rusty. They brought on Guy Chambers to produce, who’s most famous for his collaborations with Robbie Williams, and Switch would probably make more sense musically as a Sing When You’re Winning follow-up. “Hot Girls” sounds like a parody; “Devil’s Party” invokes neither the spirit nor letter of “Devil Inside”; and the album’s hit, “Pretty Vegas,” while undeniably fun, leaves you cold and calls back to an INXS sound that they’d already seemingly matured beyond in the ’90s. Without a singer who’s in on it, winking as they try to pull you into their debauchery, everything singular about INXS falls apart.