Vinyl Record
INXS - Live From Royal Albert Hall
INXS - Live From Royal Albert Hall on LP vinyl. A 1986 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
LP ยท 1986
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 1986 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Live From Royal Albert Hall catches INXS in June 1986, between the breakthrough of Listen Like Thieves and the global detonation of Kick. That timing is everything. The band were no longer an Australian new-wave export looking for a foothold, but they had not yet become the sleek stadium machine that the late 1980s would make famous. This performance belongs to the charged middle: lean, hungry, rhythmically locked, and already able to make a formal London hall feel like a club with the roof lifting. The set reaches across the band's early-to-mid-1980s ascent. Soul Mistake and Burn for You look back to the nervy art-funk of The Swing and Shabooh Shoobah, while Kiss the Dirt, Listen Like Thieves, What You Need and Shine Like It Does show the newer material taking on a tougher stage life. Michael Hutchence is central, of course, but the real pleasure is how collective the band sounds. Kirk Pengilly's sax and guitar textures, Andrew Farriss' keyboard and writing intelligence, Tim Farriss' guitar snap, Garry Gary Beers' bass movement and Jon Farriss' drums all work like a single kinetic system. Because the recording comes from a specific pre-Kick moment, it avoids the retrospective smoothness that can flatten live archives. It presents INXS as a working band in motion, sharpening its identity in front of an audience. The songs do not need later mythology to land: What You Need already has the elastic confidence of a hit, Original Sin still carries its cosmopolitan charge, and Red Red Sun closes with the feeling of a group that knows the next door is about to open.
This Royal Albert Hall set matters because it preserves INXS just before their biggest transformation. It shows the Listen Like Thieves era as a live engine, not simply a studio step toward Kick. For anyone tracing the band's rise, the performance connects the early post-punk and funk-rock years to the international pop-rock command that would soon define them.
This is a strong INXS collection piece for listeners who want live evidence of the band's 1986 power. It belongs beside Listen Like Thieves and Live Baby Live for a useful contrast: one documents the studio breakthrough, one catches the band at Wembley-scale maturity, and this one captures the urgent in-between moment before the full global takeover.
Taut mid-1980s live rock with funk-sprung bass, crisp drums, sharp guitar and sax accents, and Hutchence's voice pushing the songs toward their stadium future.
Recommended for: INXS collectors focused on the Listen Like Thieves era; Fans of archival live recordings with historical placement; Listeners who want the band before the full Kick-era gloss.
When was Live From Royal Albert Hall recorded? The performance was recorded at London's Royal Albert Hall on 24 June 1986. What period of INXS does it capture? It captures the band after Listen Like Thieves and before Kick, a crucial moment when their live sound was tightening into international scale. What songs are central to the set? What You Need, Kiss the Dirt, Original Sin, Listen Like Thieves and Shine Like It Does are among the key performances.