Matt:

I am a Kick fan from way back. No question about it. This record is easily on my all time top 50 list and makes regular appearances in my rotations every few years. Strangely enough, the time between when I last played it and when Jeff brought it up was probably the longest I’ve gone without putting it on.

Here’s what I love about this album: the band doesn’t waste a single note. Every melodic line is spare and stands on its own in the mix. No amount of classic 80′s studio overproduction can wreck it. The whole thing may be compressed to within an inch of its life but it still sounds completely dynamic. It’s the result of a bunch of guys who have been playing together for a really long time who have finally worked it all out. They remind me of Huey Lewis and the News in that way.

How did they pull off using so many sounds and yet end up with an album this cohesive? Is that a banjo in New Sensation? Every guitar is processed differently and no two synths are set the same. And the drums! Sometimes they’re live, sometimes synth, sometimes a mix. They even get cowbell in there without it sounding corny. Is it really just Hutchensen’s voice holding everything all together?

It really could be. Either that or his hair. I certainly wanted my hair to look like that, but it didn’t curl at all. I ended up looking like Lou Barlow instead, which was fine once I got to college. About the only thing that feels dated is the saxophone which shows up in Never Tear Us Apart and even that sounds less dated than any of the sax the E Street Band recorded. If you didn’t revisit the videos, this album might be difficult for someone new to INXS to place in time. But if you did, that INXS sailor suit the drummer is wearing in Need You Tonight gives it all away. Seriously, what is that thing? Did they sell that on tour at the merch table?

While all the hits but Never Tear Us Apart are on the A side, I’m probably a bigger fan of the B side. Mystify through Tiny Daggers was always my favorite sequence. It doesn’t make any sense, I know, but I would have maybe never turned the record over if Guns in the Sky were there instead of Never Tear Us Apart.

Speaking of timeless, how well does Guns in the Sky still work? Twenty years later and we continue to love our big houses and we have all the same guys from the 80s still hanging around. I would be perfectly happy to stop the world and let off Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and let them go live with their guns in the sky. AH! Huh huh, HUUUH!

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