I call shenanigans. After seeing blurbs on MSN.com for a couple of months about the silly reality show to find a new singer for INXS, I never bothered to check it out. However, I do recall reading a few of the show notes and it was pretty vapid. Big drama ensued and the new singer J.D. Fortune (a former homeless guy) got the gig.
Considering one of INXS’s big hits was “Devil Inside”, I thought it was a pretty big lack of imagination to name the opening cut on Switch, “Devil’s Party.” The rest of the disc is pretty uninteresting and if you weren’t a huge fan of this band, you wouldn’t even know there was a change in personnel. Even J.D.’s phrasing is so similar to Michael Hutchence, it’s just not interesting fodder.
Most of the songs on the disc have a basic 8-count dance beat, taking more advantage of ProTools than previous INXS work and featuring a bit more compression. Offering a high resolution stereo mix on the DVD side is a waste of time, it sounds just as compressed.
I’m sure that there are a lot of people that were waiting for this disc so that INXS could continue on as a band again, but I’m not one of them. My recommendation is to spend the $18 on something else.
– Jeff Dorgay