Review Summary: The swing was the first step to their stardom but this album is when they started making legend
Unlike their UK counterpart Duran Duran found success in their first album, INXS had a little more to row until they got recognised worldwide. The first 3 albums went nowhere outside Australia and their fourth album "The swing" was when they started to get attention around the world with their iconic single "Original Sin", but in Listen like thieves is when they started to be recognised as the Australian band we all know today.
Perhaps the decision of putting the first single "What you need" as the first song of the album was an amazing idea, considering that they made that same movement on The Swing and that's how you buy the interest in keep listening the album.
Maybe the album is not as flawless as their iconic album "kick" but the album is extremely catchy and at least half of the album has a bunch of classic INXS songs which are "What you need", "Kiss the dirt", "Listen like thieves" and a ballad in the same vein of "Never tear us apart": "Shine like it does".
What I noticed in this particular album is that INXS took some of the songwriting they did in their second album "Underneath the colours" (one of their first extremely underrated album) and they improved it for better.
The album contains the treadmark INXS sound: the saxophone solos, catchy riffs, atmospheric synths and the unique voice of Michael Hutchhence.
From my point of view the album does not contain any weak song, every song makes justice on it's own, especially the hard rock driven "good times + bad times" which is personally my favourite on the album.
.Sadly the second part of the album does not contain any remarkable song, although "This time" was released as a single. A curious feature in the second part is that it contains an instrumental written by Tim Farris called "Three sisters", a first for INXS.
Even though this album would probably make it the third most popular album in their career besides Kick and X, the album is probably the first masterpiece INXS did.
