I'll Give You POLL You Need: INXS Listen Like Thieves Poll

Slept-on album track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtlT32GW5bE

LOL, saw the poll and was like "FINALLY GET TO VOTE FOR 'BITING BULLETS' IN SOMETHING!!!" It's this album's secret "Don't Change."

"Falling Down The Mountain" also A+++ among the album cuts. This whole album plus the "Shabooh Shabbah" singles are pretty much everything I want from INXS.

It was a single though! I love it though. "Shine Like It Does" is the other finalist.

"what you need" is the best inxs song so that

It's better than "Need You Tonight" sure

"need you tonight" is #3 after "the one thing"

Kiss the Dirt imo, but this is a solid lp.

I think I still have the original cassette I bought of this album. In fact, I'm certain of it.

"what you need" is the best inxs song so that

― reggie (qualmsley), Thursday, September 5, 2013 10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No. Everybody with any sense knows that "Don't Change" is the best INXS song and that, tbh, it is also one of the top ten songs ever in general. Duh.

^^Truth.

See? EZ knows what's up.

kiss my dirt, EZ.

This Time was my favorite when I was a kid. The lyrics sound cheesy now, but I still like the sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rMt7FQgzpw

Kiss the Dirt.

This album has aged better than period U2.

Voted "Kiss The Dirt", but this album is part of my DNA. This was my sister's favorite band, and this album was on nonstop from the winter of 85 through the summer of 86. The songs sound weird to me taken out of this context.

Unrelated INXS note: "Don't Change" is one of only a handful of perfect songs ever created.

It really really is.

I think I still have the original cassette I bought of this album. In fact, I'm certain of it.

― Marlo Poco (Phil D.), Friday, September 6, 2013 8:28 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

So do I, and I even know where it is! I've never listened to this album on any other format tbh.

This was definitely my favorite album ever when I was around 11. I don't think it's even my favorite INXS album anymore though. I do also have my original cassette somewhere.

I would love to be able to hear this without the massive filter of nostalgia. Oh wait, no I wouldn't.

Cassette does this album justice: punchy and trebly.

Until the remasters a few years ago all I had was a dub cassette from my sister's LP. It's almost too pristine on cd; I miss the original old needle crackle and the gradual tape warp from 25 years of service.

If I wasn't listening to the new Goldfrapp on Spotify right now I'd pull this up. Probably will next.

At some point I downloaded MP3s of all the albums from Shabooh Shoobah to X so I haven't actually listened to any of my old cassettes in years.

Relistening for the first time in 20+ years an album I knew intimately and for me it's a toss-up between:

Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)
Shine Like It Does
Biting Bullets
This Time

Leaning toward This Time...

This Time/Shine/Kiss the Dirt/What you need/

so many choices!

everybody's down on their knees!

also is that cover an all-time classic or what

I can already imagine the LIT concert shirt with yellow armpit stains

so many Listen Like Theives tank tops, the kinds with the huge armholes that come down to your waist

that is what I saw as a kid

also vivid memories of being 10 years old in my 16 year-old friend's bedroom staring up at her MASSIVE Listen Like Thieves poster over her bed (and another of Nik Kershaw who looked kind of like a star wars jedi but that's another story)

let's go back there shall we
(Original Sin included as an added bonus)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVNeTBByr88

God, he was just pure sex.

Who, Tim Farriss? Uh, if you say so I guess.

I love his hair in this era, kinda like a romantic new wave mullet with that long trail hanging down his back and his floppy fringe, it's so rad

and did you see his tshirt

WATCH THE WORLD ARGUE

<3

i was gonna say the same thing about his hair! it's a lost boys mullet.

that is an A+ description, yes

thou shalt not kill

more why not

audio is bad but I loooooooooove this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJVTNiyth7Y

i am v interested in his shoulders

He has those bulbous eyeballs.

this is p good too, Biting Bullets @ rotterdam in 85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtlT32GW5bE

the more I listen to the album the harder time I have deciding which song to pick

I'm still bummed at myself for never seeing them live. A bunch of my friends went in high school in 93, but that was for Welcome To Wherever You Are and I was pretty turned off them by then, they had started to get kinda sucky so I didn't go.

stupid

I posted that clip upthread; watching it made me poll this album. It's tight!

I think i prefer that and One X One as live versions, on the album they sound a bit cluttered, like his voice is fighting with the arrangements in places

I love the way Falling Down the Mountain sounds on the album though -- the way his voice comes in so intimately, like he's leaning in and singing right in yr ear

I love the confidence of "Same Direction." They launch into the chorus after a minute of synth bass fooferal and hard strumming.

there are no wrong answers here, but "this time" is the right answer

unless it's "shine like it does"

definitely one of those two though

or "what you need"

watch the "Biting Bullets" clip again.

Was listening to this band a few weeks ago, and everything about them just seems so accidentally great. I would never call INXS a great band, and as much as I listened the hell out of this album and "Kick," I'm not sure they're great records, either. Yet this band stumbles on greatness so often, so effortlessly (in the truest sense) it's as if they've been touched with a gift to generate huge perfect hooks and know just where to put them.

not to be too parochial or whatever but it's like everyone in the band was just really fucking solid at their job, and they were all somehow able to meld together without being dicks abt it (seemingly)

like they feel like one of those classic oldschool bands made up of session players or something

xpost occam's razor may be helpful here

alfred otm, that biting bullets vid has been rattling round my head all day

Watching those clips, I could help but recall this incredible Midnight Oils concert from the same year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AONxdnTrZSU

What's harder to believe from this clip, that they were contemporaries, or that Midnight Oil was on the cusp of a pop breakthrough?

oils were already kind of massive by 85...the Power and the Passion came out in 82 and that was just as ubiquitous as what came later -- I mean they had their 'pop breakthrough' internationally sure, but they were kind of consistently huge from then on, at least for a while.

and inxs was the same way, they kept getting huger and huger with each album

anyway I found this and it's pretty much perfect, almost feels like a deliberately-shot video for the loneliness of it

they're rehearsing for Countdown, an Oz charts show that ran for a hundred years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eDLOQpwRw4

"What You Need" hit top five in the U.S. and the albim peaked at #11. They were like U2 -- about to conquer the world.

which album was inxs' zooropa

Their Achtung Baby was pretty dull.

They suddenly looked dowdy in 1992 because they imitated U2 while U2 appropriated the INXS sleaze.

"Elegantly wasted" was Bono'a idea of nirvana in the nineties.

Full Moon Dirty Hearts, probably. It was ambitious in all the wrong ways, though.

many xposts i r dumb, not a countdown rehearsal video, it was at the Marquee in london (yknow, hence the big sign in the background dumb me)

not to be too parochial or whatever but it's like everyone in the band was just really fucking solid at their job, and they were all somehow able to meld together without being dicks abt it (seemingly)

This might be an Aussie thing. The same is kinda sorta true of Men At Work at their best. (Who Can It Be Now, It's A Mistake, Overkill, etc.)

which album was inxs' zooropa

It's a weird spot in his career, but Brian Eno actually did work with INXS! On, yes, "Full Moon, Dirty Hearts." This song specifically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jl7FItnP4

xpost Was Midnight Oil massive anywhere but Australia pre-"Diesel and Dust?"

This Time

"Shine Like It Does" shows how capable they were of great album tracks.

Ned agrees!

Ned is known for his good taste

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Everybody's down on their knees.

Some good stuff on this record (though, sorry Alfred, I still prefer Kick), but the correct answer is clearly "This Time."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that's about the best result I could have asked for

Yeah can't really argue with these results. Kind of wish the title track didn't get shut out though.

Wow!

voted "shine like it does" - no regrets but crazy to see title track and "same direction" get blanked

Wish someone had voted for three sisters because that would have been hilarious

I was going totally bananas trying to think of what this one little part of Miley Cyrus's 'Wrecking Ball' reminded me of, like my brain would always just almost remember it and then it would slip back into Miley again, and I finally remembered -- it's Same Direction. The songs aren't similar at all, but this one little part is almost identical. If you know both songs, you'll know which part.

“biting bullets” invented the killers

not terribly invested in my own opinion here but pretty sure The Swing is their best LP

thread title missed hard when "POLLing Down the Mountain" was RIGHT THERE

(with all due respect to the Lord)