Switch to survive

The latest INXS album, Switch, has been released. These are great news for anyone who watched the RockStar INXS show, or for the fans, or, in general for anyone who really gives a damn about that band. Which are, probably, not that many. After all, we are talking about a band that, at the best times, looked like the Australian version of the Beach Boys, a bunch of chubby nerds imitating the "cool guys", but with a twist, that unlike the Beach Boys, INXS had a really, really cool guy in front. In fact, a lot of the bad things about INXS were revealed during the RockStar show. Meagerly, that we're talking about a "meh" band. Take the drums, for example.When that House Band bloke sat on them, he got a very full, strong sound out of them. Contrary to that, the INXS drummer (one of the Farriss Bros.) managed to get a sound that made me think someone replace the drumskins with some hollow wood.
Come to think of it, the entire House Band concept was really ridiculous, and made the fact that one thing INXS isn't, it's a a band of some virtuos capabilities.

Enough mud throwing, the new album "Switch" is out, and can be sampled here. By "Sampled" I mean you can listen to the beginnings of all the songs in the album, which is great if you're writing a seminar about INXS song openings. Other than that, not much to go on.
The good news: you do get to hear the entire "Pretty Vegas". If anyone followed the show, then there isn't much new here, surprisingly enough, INXS didn't kill the song, but actually supplied some cool touches. The slide guitar in the chorus for example is a nice idea, the bridge in the middle is also good, although I would've preferred a guitar solo there. There is some obnoxious riff going through the song, probably so Tim Farriss will have something to do, but it's somewhat ignorable.
The other good news is that apparently they ditched "Easy, Easy", the song that closed the RockStar finale. Good thinking too. From the rest of the clips, it appears that JD is very up to the job, although the job in this case isn't much to write home about. One must remember that this album was created without an actual singer in mind. I truly think that the album to look for is the next one (assuming there will be such an album). It will benefit from JD's writing talent, as well as will be written for him as a singer.