SORRY - SOLD OUT

Mobile Fidelity - MOFI1-003 - 140 Gram Vinyl - 

Numbered Limited Edition -   Pressed at RTI  

Mastered on the Mobile Fidelity The Gain 2 Ultra Analog System

Should you find yourself in a totally 80s mood, Kick is fun to revisit as it’s chock full of familiar hits and finds INXS was at the top of its game. It’s amazing at how much more music there’s on this record that many of us never heard the first time around. And after spinning both sides, it’s clear that MoFi has kept their promise. The surfaces are just as quiet as any of the label’s recent half-speed-mastered LPs, and while the latter still possess extra degrees of ultimate smoothness, the results are excellent and worthy of your hard-earned cash.  And for any collectors concerned about cover quality, the printing is first-rate, too.  - Jeff Dorgay Toneaudio

The last throes of Reagan’s presidency, big hair, carefree existence, the promise of a booming economy, preppy clothes, Nintendo 8-bit gaming systems, and MTV’s seemingly limitless reign: All happy memories conjured by INXS’ Kick, on the creative level of anything Madonna, Prince, or Michael Jackson recorded at the time. More than six million copies sold, four Top 5 singles, and still, nearly 25 years later, not one feeble moment, justify the 1987 record’s status as pure pop genius.

Anchored by the sensual purr of vocalist Michael Hutchence and frisky drumming (recorded in analog) of Jon Farriss, Kick taps into a hybrid style that freshly stays away from the era’s plastic, manufactured sounds and narrow-minded, vacant aesthetic. A seamless fusion of dance beats, sleek rock riffs, soaring hooks, horn-fueled R&B, and string-laden accents, the 12-track set is an irresistibly catchy and liquidly fluid sonic miasma that contains every single element a classic contemporary pop work requires. Above all, every song boasts a different feel and distinctive pace, characteristics that aren’t forced but natural results of the collective’s chemistry. The sexy, breathy pop-funk “Need You Tonight” clicks with interlocking arrangements and murmured vocals.

The atmospheric, synth-drum-punctuated “Meditate” hallucinates with stream-of-conscious vocals and percolating grooves. Well-placed pauses, hypnotic flanged guitar passages, and so-funky-you’ll-sweat saxophone breaks pepper the liberating rock smash “New Sensation.” INXS also kicks out upbeat dance-inflected jams on the brassy skirt-swaying title track, syncopated “Calling All Nations,” and elsewhere, but doesn’t forget the importance of a bleeding-heart ballad. Hence, the devastatingly moving “Never Tear Us Apart,” the knifing strings and guitar twang proving dramatic, direct, and honest. The late 1980s produced a handful of more commercially successful pop records, but none is better than Kick.