Welcome to Wherever You Are is the eighth studio album by Australian rock band INXS, which was released on 3 August 1992. With grunge and alternative music breaking into the mainstream, INXS tried to establish a new direction for itself, incorporating sitars, a 60-piece orchestra, and a much more "raw" sound to their music. In its four-star review of the album, Q called it "... a far more engaging and heartfelt collection than anything the group has put out in recent memory ... It rocks," and listed it as one of the 50 Best Albums of 1992. It was the first album by an Australian group to debut on the UK Albums Chart at number one since AC/DC's Back in Black, released in 1980.
Despite the positive critical reception, along with charting well on most countries' album charts (including topping the UK chart and reaching number two in Australia), the album marked a commercial decline for the band, especially in the United States, where it only peaked at number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The commercial decline was partially due to the lack of promotion by their label and changing musical tastes towards grunge and alternative. Also hurting promotions, the band elected to take a break and not tour in support of the album. The plan was that the band would instead record the follow-up (which went on to become 1993's Full Moon, Dirty Hearts) and then tour in support of both albums. The downside of this, however, was that Welcome to Wherever You Are faded from press and public attention more quickly, and, as a result, failed to match the success of INXS's two previous albums, Kick and X.
While the single "Baby Don't Cry" was a Top 20 hit in the UK, the album's biggest American hit was "Not Enough Time", which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and stayed there for five consecutive weeks.
In 2002, a remastered version of the album was released, which included five previously unreleased tracks.
Background Following the release of their seventh studio album, X, INXS staged a worldwide concert tour titled the X-Factor Tour. The ten-month tour began in October 1990 and consisted of four legs with a total of 121 shows. Retrieved 8 February 2017INXS Gigography - inxsonline.com. Retrieved 8 February 2017. The 1990–91 tour proved successful, attracting 1.2 million fans across four continents. Retrieved 8 February 2017 To coincide with the successful tour, INXS released their first live album, Live Baby Live, a few months after the tour had finished. Live Baby Live features 15 live tracks taken from various shows during the band's Summer XS leg of the tour. Although the album was commercially successful, peaking in the top 10 on both the AustralianAustralian-charts INXS – Live Baby Live" Retrieved 8 February 2017 and UK Albums Chart, as well as earning platinum status in the United States,"Gold & Platinum - RIAA - INXS". Retrieved 8 February 2017 some critics criticised the album for sounding too studio-like.
The members of INXS began preparations for their eighth studio album towards the end of the X tour. Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Farriss had already written a number of songs while the band was on the road, including "Shining Star", which was quickly recorded and added to the Live Baby Live album as a bonus studio track. Once the band got back to Australia, the song-writing duo of Farriss and vocalist Michael Hutchence paired up to begin writing new material. Rehearsals for Welcome to Wherever You Are soon took place at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney. Retrieved 8 February 2017
Recording and production In November 1991, INXS entered Rhinoceros studios in Sydney to begin work on their eighth studio album. With no time constraints and enough money to make new studio recordings, the band members continued writing new material and experimenting with new sounds. Having worked with producer Chris Thomas previously on Listen Like Thieves, Kick and X, the band chose to work with Australian producer Mark Opitz, who was behind the production of the band's third studio album, Shabooh Shoobah, ten years earlier. For this album, INXS decided to shift their musical direction by incorporating a much "rawer" sound. To achieve this, a variety of techniques were used during production, such as stripping down the polished sound that was present on their previous albums with Thomas. Heavy distortion was used on the guitars.INXS - 1992 Radio Interview on 102.7 WEQX. Retrieved 8 February 2017 Opitz and Hutchence also used heavy distortion on the vocals, an experience that Hutchence enjoyed. In a 1992 radio interview promoting the release of Welcome to Wherever You Are, guitarist Tim Farriss recalls the same technique used in producing music in the 1960s: "Sometimes they used to mix the vocal back so the band would sound louder, punchier and harder".
The album includes the work and sound of the Australian Concert orchestra on the songs "Baby Don't Cry" and "Men and Women".Welcome to Wherever You Are liner notes. Retrieved 4 February 2017 The band recorded both tracks live in the studio, with the 60-piece orchestra being conducted by Colin Piper and engineered by Neil Sandbach. For the opening track "Questions", guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly used a brass horn to create a Far East sound. Australian singer Deni Hines was hired to provide backing vocals on one of the album's singles, "Not Enough Time", and the track "Strange Desire". The singer would go on to marry Pengilly one year later."Kirk Pengilly - Biography - OoCities. Retrieved February 8th, 2017. Tim Farriss was absent during most of the album's production because he was suffering from exostosis. Retrieved 22 August 2016 Pengilly had to play most of his material. Pengilly himself was recovering from the end of a ten-year relationship. Other band members were also going through eventful experiences in their lives, including drummer Jon Farriss, who was preparing to marry his girlfriend at the time, Leslie Bega, whom he had met the previous year in Los Angeles. Bassist Garry Gary Beers and his then-wife, Jodie, were awaiting the birth of their second child. In the band's 2005 official autobiography, INXS: Story to Story, Optiz recalls, "The album is very much Andrew, Michael and myself. We didn't have everyone's minds on the job because some of them were going through significant things in their personal lives".
In the midst of recording, the band were approached to headline the Concert for Life, a benefit show staged in Sydney's Centennial Park on 28 March 1992. The event was held to help raise money for the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Centre and AIDS Patient Services and Research, at St Vincent's Hospital. More than 62,000 people attended the event, with other Australian acts, including Crowded House and Jimmy Barnes headlining. For the encore, the orchestra were hired once again to help INXS perform their new song, "Baby Don't Cry", as well as "Never Tear Us Apart". The band included two more songs from the new album on their set list: "Taste It" and "All Around". Upon returning to the studio to finish the rest of the album, the band members decided not to tour in support for Welcome to Wherever You Are; instead they came up with the idea of doing a follow-up album, and then touring in support of both. Opitz went on to produce the follow-up, Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, a year later, continuing the band's experimentation with their musical style. Welcome to Wherever You Are is the first studio album to have all members of INXS share production credits.
Composition As a result of INXS' self-reinvention and intention to explore new musical directions, Welcome to Wherever You Are is the band's most experimental album, as apparent in the use of the 60-piece orchestra, instances of Middle Eastern instrumentation, "layers of distortion", female backing vocals and influences from baggy music ("Taste It") and melancholic songs from the Velvet Underground ("Beautiful Girl"). The album is eclectic in nature, with David Sinclair of Q noting that it strips back the production of its immediate predecessors to allow for "a variety of stylistic adventures of which you would hardly believe INXS to be capable." The music critic Ira Robbins says the album "shuffles the deck with samples, world music accents and surprising conceptual inversions, striking a mindful balance between ambition and common sense", while writer Manny Grillo says it "blends their usual funky dance rock with more alternative rock and world music textures", noting that the orchestra are employed both for anthemic ("Baby Don't Cry") and more serious ("Men and Women") effect. The record has also been called "dance-influenced".
Commenting on the band's new direction, Farriss stated: "In the past we've been a little too conscious of our song style, and we dropped that this time round." Hutchence commented, "Every band comes to a point where they let go. With albums, you're trying to attempt something over and over and get it right. Maybe you don't know when it is right and you go over that hill. We decided to knock it on the head and go into the studio to see what happens, see what we are, start again."
The album's eclectic, experimental direction is immediately apparent with the ethnic opening track, "Questions". A Middle Eastern-flavoured psychedelic song, it has been described as "a mystical Indian drone, peppered with exotic tabla rhythms and underpinned by synths and a drum machine". According to AllMusic: "From the start of the album, it's clear that INXS are out to confuse the standard perceptions of the band; the first instrument on the album is an Eastern-flavored horn." By contrast, "Heaven Sent" is a heavy, Iggy Pop-esque garage rock song, with Hutchence's snarling vocals distorted to sound as though they were sung through a megaphone. "Communication" is a stadium-friendly "tech satire", with lyrics referring to satellite dishes and "communication disinformation". It uses the studio as an instrument and features catchy guitar work. The baggy-adjacent "Taste It" is a groove-based track with an ambient, woolly drum sound.
"Not Enough Time" features a pulsating soul groove, with Sinclair comparing Hutchence's vocals to David Bowie, while "All Around" is a rock song reminiscent of the Beatles. The orchestrations on the anthemic, symphonic "Baby Don't Cry" are comparable to 1960s rock and soul music. Rather than using the orchestra for background shading, as is typical of orchestras on rock songs, INXS and Opitz "push it to the front of the mix, forcing the rock instruments to compete," resulting in a dense arrangement. The melancholic "Beautiful Girl" was inspired by the Velvet Underground and features a delicate melody. "Wishing Well" features a sinuous, bluesy bass line and Hammond organ parts, while "Back On Line" has been described as "an unlikely trip to the spacy land of psychedelia-tinged R&B." The record closes with "Men and Women", a bleak, largely beatless song featuring a murky sound comprising harsh guitar chugs, kettle drums and symphonic orchestration.
Packaging Previous designs for INXS releases, including Kick and X, were created by visual artist Nick Egan, and included strong shots of the band, but for the release of Welcome to Wherever You Are, INXS wanted to go for a more artistic and creative theme. A technique known as "situation photography" was used to shoot random pictures for the album's cover art, as well as the album's five singles. The album and its accompanying singles would all have the same font style and effect used for the title. The title is printed on a long, narrow piece of paper, and is coated onto the random photograph with adhesive tape.