Michael Hutchence: Michael Hutchence : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This record arrives heavy with sadness: the recent memory of Michael Hutchence's 1997 suicide; the knowledge that he left this project, his first solo album outside of INXS, unfinished at his death; Bono's eulogistic vocal contribution to "Slide Away." There is also the accidental prophecy of lines like, "Saw a million pieces / Of the shape I'm in / Hanging from a chandelier," compounded by the unintended lie of the song title "Put the Pieces Back Together." Much of the music on this record has a gray chill, as well -- beats that click like heels on a wet sidewalk, doleful strings, reflective electronics. It is as if Hutchence, beset by devils he was unable to exorcise through INXS' funk 'n' pop, set out to write his own epitaph, then could not bear to finish it.

But don't get blindsided by hindsight. In life, Hutchence was as serious about his craft as he was intoxicated by rock-star living, and on Michael Hutchence -- co-produced by Andy Gill and Danny Saber -- he set his arena-rock torch singing in a provocative landscape of melancholy-machine music. "Possibilities" is an elegant grenade of self-doubt ("It's so strange / How my life's changed / I know nothing / About the people that I touched"). Hutchence doesn't actually say much lyrically in "All I'm Saying," but the bend and tremor in his voice clearly broadcast a fear of impending loneliness.

In the midst of that, upbeat moments like "Get on the Inside" and "A Straight Line" can't help sounding inappropriate. They lack muscular conviction, as well, like INXS without the cocky guitars. Ironically, Michael Hutchence's greatest strength is its bleak honesty; at his best, Hutchence sounds like he is stepping out of routine, not slipping into darkness. But history proved otherwise, and we are left with the last recorded testament of a man who had much he wanted to get out in song -- but ran out of time and strength. (RS 839)

DAVID FRICKE