INXS – Elegantly Wasted

very good mastering for vinyl!! great clean balanced sound stage! some clicks and pops but nothing that a good ultrasonic cleaning cant fix!

It's strange to see the record company has put a lot of pictures of the model on the cover and in inlay and mentioned her times 0. Quick google reveals her name is Laura von Lindholm, a former Playboy model married to Peter Schmeichel.

Excellent sound, great remaster. Side B is much more quiet than side A. But, good job.

Dirty dirty dirty pressing awhhhhfg. Cant they get it right?

Does anyone else’s copy have a misprint on the spine, reading “Eleganyly Wasted” instead of Elegantly Wasted?

Agree with dint10, this pressing from GZ Media is by far the worst pressing I have.
Beware of this pressing.

I need the vinyl version! Does anyone have a vinyl copy of this album that they'd like to sell?

Did you ever look at something and think that you saw it ... did you ever listen to something and think that you understood it, only to wake up one morning to find that you didn’t recognize it at all? Such was my experience with the album Elegantly Wasted by INXS ... and if truth be told I could not have been more pleased, as Elegantly Wasted was to INXS what Revolver was to The Beatles.

I’m not going to claim that I didn’t like the pop songs of INXS, or that I don’t have other albums by the band, but here on this release I felt both elation and a sense of loss. I felt elation because I sensed that I was now hearing the band for who they actually were, as they had stepped out from the shadows for the first time. I felt a profound sense of loss because just when INXS had made a real mark on me I realized there would be no other material of this caliber, or with this magic from this incarnation of the band again.

This release ignores the pop songs, presenting a darker image, more conceptual, more demanding, more serious, yet more introspective and subtle version of their sound. If I can link these two adjectives together, I would say that Elegantly Wasted is full of doom and grace ... in the style and with the strength of Joy Division, Jesus and Mary Chain, or the early outings by Peter Murphy.

After the first spin of this record one finds a more musically muted album ... yet later, after a couple of more listens, there are layerings of textures and sounds that create the atmosphere I believe INXS actually lived in, but until now had never found the balance skill or drive to reveal, where as such keen inner vision and introspection require time for the artists to come to terms with. Instead of simply relying on the vocals of Michael Hutchence to carry the songs forward, INXS swung heavily to the musical side, which only seemed to frame and emphasize Michael’s lyrics all the more, making them seem elaborate and eloquently important because they were not so propionate. But this is not to say that this release is limited in any fashion at all, it’s a bold solid body of work that pumps and rocks, flows and ebbs, all with a sound that is intoxicatingly prophetic.

Now you have to make the choice between the pop of INXS, or this deliciously serious brilliant piece of music. For me, the choice is easy.

*** The Fun Facts: Originally performing as The Vegetables while regularly support Midnight Oil and other local bands. Morris advised that a member of the Oils crew had come up with a new name and suggested they change it to INXS. The name INXS was inspired by English band XTC and Australian jam makers IXL. Pengilly later explained that Morris was interested in turning the group into a Christian band, which the band briefly considered before rejecting the idea.

The front cover for Elegantly Wasted shows a mini video shoot that was specially shot and directed for the album's cinematic album art. The entire video shoot was directed and photographed by Danish photographer Pierre Winther in locations around California in 1996. Winther, famous for his filmic visionary manages to tell a complex story in each of his staged shots. The front cover for shows a dramatic shot of the band caught up in a cinematic setting where it appears that an attractive girl has emerged safely from a car accident, just under the viaduct at 635-651 S. Anderson Street in downtown Los Angeles (that no longer exists). A different photograph of the girl getting out of the car was shot and used as the artwork for the "Elegantly Wasted" single. The same girl can be seen wandering the streets of San Francisco in the music video for the album's second single, "Searching". The album's accompanying booklet contains additional photography of the band near the Edwards Air Force Base in the Californian desert. The artwork for the singles, "Searching" and "Everything" feature photographs as the cover art, which were also taken in the Californian desert.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Does anyone have a vinyl copy of this album that they'd like to sell?

Another really filthy LP from GZ Media.
Do they kick them around the factory floor before packing them? Won't buy another from them.