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MICHAEL HUTCHENCE
Michael Hutchence
(V2 Records)
One of the year's most anticipated albums, as far as INXS fans are concerned, finally hits stores on Tuesday.
Interest for everyone else is also piqued, since this solo outing from INXS frontman Michael Hutchence comes three years after his suicide at the age of 37.
The 13-track album was largely finished before Hutchence's passing, but was delayed out of respect to the singer and his family.
Producers/co-writers Andy Gill (Gang Of Four) and Danny Saber (U2, Rolling Stones, Black Grape), who wound up finishing the album's standout track, the haunting, atmospheric, Slide Away, with U2's Bono on additional vocals, also needed a year to regroup after Hutchence's death. The singer was found naked, hanging in a hotel room in Sydney on the eve of an INXS 20th-anniversary tour.
So you can imagine songs with suicidal overtones, like A Straight Line, with Hutchence singing, "I'm up at the top, looking down, everybody looks just like ants, it would be so easy," or titles like Fear, and Don't Save Me From Myself aren't easy to listen to.
For the most part though, this collection, which was recorded over two years in L.A., London and the French Riveria, isn't a far cry from the funk-and-R&B-driven dance pop of INXS.
Hutchence growls his way through rockers like the album opener Let Me Show You, with Joe Strummer on backing vocals, but the more interesting material is when he bares some soul and emotion.
The strings-accompanied and drum-looped Possibilities finds Hutchence pondering his impact as he sings: "It's so strange, How my life's changed, I know nothing, about the people that I touched."
Or the funky Get On The Inside, featuring Bernard Fowler (Rolling Stones) and Denise Richards (Primal Scream) on backup vocals while Hutchence laments: "Inside we lay in shadows, outside they push the skin parade."
Hutchence wrote much of the album during his turbulent, tabloid-documented relationship with Paula Yates. Hutchence broke up Yates' marriage to Irish pop star Bob Geldof and an ugly custody battle over the three Yates-Geldof children ensued.
Many of the songs touch on the unpleasantness as Hutchence sings, "I'm sick of the dogs outside my window" on the funky Baby It's Alright, or "Strip away the bones and skin, show me what lies within, would you be the one that I love, " on the ballad standout Flesh And Blood, a slow-tempoed, sad rumination with strings.
Whatever you think of the music, which I think is inferior overall to the last INXS album, 1997's Elegantly Wasted, you certainly get a glimpse inside Hutchence's obviously troubled head.
On the standout rock track, Put The Pieces Back Together, he sings: "I saw a million pieces of the shape I'm in, hanging from a chandelier, put the pieces back together."
If only he had.
Later Hutchence sings: "I just want to slide away and come alive again," on Slide Away. Certainly on this song, he does.
Track Listing
1. Let Me Show You - (with Joe Strummer)
2. Possibilities
3. Get On The Inside
4. Fear
5. All I'm Saying
6. Straight Line, A
7. Baby It's Alright
8. Don't Save Me From Myself
9. She Flirts For England
10. Flesh And Blood
11. Put The Pieces Back Together
12. Breathe
13. Slide Away - (featuring Bono)