VIA PRESS RELEASE | After breaking through in 1985 with Listen Like Thieves, the Australian group INXS—Michael Hutchence, Andrew Farriss, Tim Farriss, Jon Farriss, Kirk Pengilly, and Garry ‘Gary’ Beers—set out to raise the stakes with the follow-up, Kick. Today unveils the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees’ audiophile-vinyl edition of the band’s global blockbuster Kick, arriving May 1.
Kick (Rhino High Fidelity) was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. It features glossy gatefold packaging with newly written liner notes by music journalist David Fricke. The album is limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies and available exclusively at Rhino.com. Pre-order HERE.
Working with producer Chris Thomas, the band delivered the definitive INXS album, a potent mix of new wave, danceable funk, and Stones-styled rock. In the liner notes, Tim Farriss recalls: “Chris understood the band… He said, ‘My goal is to make you come across on record the way you do live. Which’—and these were his exact words—‘you haven’t done yet.’” Bob Clearmountain was on a hot run—engineering David Bowie’s Let’s Dance (1983); mixing Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. (1984); co-producing the Pretenders’ Get Close (1986)—when INXS asked him to mix Kick. He recalls “sitting there, listening to the rough mixes” for the first time at AIR Studios in London, “Chris played me the whole album, and I was overwhelmed: ‘My God, this is fantastic.’”
Kick sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was certified 6x Platinum in the US and Diamond in Canada. The Atlantic album included no less than four U.S. Top 10 singles: “Need You Tonight” (#1), “Devil Inside” (#2), “New Sensation” (#3), and “Never Tear Us Apart” (#7).
In the liners, Fricke shares that the band embraced a “less is more” philosophy in the studio. Andrew Farriss told him, “The space on Kick wasn’t an accident. We realized that if this album was to be a success, it’s gotta be simple… There’s not much in it. But what’s in it’—Tim’s funky-chicken picking in “Need You Tonight”; Hutchence’s Gregorian-biker chant in the ambient mist of “Mediate”; Pengilly’s sax blowing up the suspense in “Never Tear Us Apart”—is damn good.’”
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination marks the first time INXS has appeared on the ballot in the group’s nearly 50-year history. Inductees for the Class of 2026 are expected to be announced next month, with the induction ceremony taking place later this fall. Andrew recently told Billboard: “I think everybody in the band is thrilled and excited to be nominated, and obviously we’re very much honored to have something like that.”
