up some excitement about their careers, INXS is easily the one for whom the move makes the most sense. That unbroken link to their past made last night's show in front of a packed Phoenix (capacity 1,000) seem like more than just the usual publicity gimmick.
Loading up their set with seven new songs from their upcoming Full Moon, Dirty Hearts album (due out in September), Michael Hutchence and Co. crunched out the kind of old-fashioned, riff-heavy rosk that sounds more at home in a sweaty club than a cavernous arena.
If anything, the new material is a full-blown return to the band's roots. Songs such as Days of Rust, Cut Your Roses, and what sounds like a killer single, Got That Need, are so basic they make The Stones sound like a string quartet.
And the older numbers the band picked were almost exclusively no-frills rockers, from Need You Tonight to Suicide Blonde to New Sensation, tunes that sounded last night like they were written for the express purpose of selling beer (and we mean that in a nice way.)
Hutchence seemed especially happy on the tiny stage, constantly reaching out to stap hands, and repeatedlt spraying the crowd with rock's unofficial new beverage, Evian water. Half-way through the proceedings, he was even moved to utter something unimaginably cliched like, "This is what it's all about: - before the ultra-cool arena-rocker in him finally surfaced. "Or at least, that's what somebody told me."