After 1990’s X didn’t mimic the success of KICK, INXS returned with 1992’s Welcome To Wherever You Are. They brought back producer Mark Optiz, who’d worked on their third album, 1982’s Shabooh Shoobah, which had established the band outside of Australia. It seems to kick off a new era of the band — calmer, more mature, less intensely sexual but still undeniably sensual.

The Eastern sounds of the first track, “Questions,” lead you to believe you’re in for an album from a band that doesn’t know how to cope with their own mortality so must borrow from other cultures, but it blossoms into their best work of the ’90s. The second track, the Andrew Farriss–penned “Heaven Sent,” gives us a processed Hutchence vocal that lets his voice mix in with the instruments, providing less of the backing-band sensation that sometimes befell INXS. Effects are used on his vocals throughout the album — such as on the stadium-ready “Communications” and “All Around” — which adds to the feeling that this was a band shedding its skin once again.

Its biggest Stateside hit was “Not Enough Time,” a toned-down, bass-y love song with a piano coloring Hutchence’s gravelly vocals. “Beautiful Girl,” also a single, was written by Andrew Farriss alone and was also a moderate chart success, hitting No. 10 on the Modern Rock chart. Since Shabooh Shoobah’s “To Look At You,” he’d been proving himself the sweet counterpoint to Hutchence’s sex, and this is his most overt display and probably the best love song in a catalogue full of come-ons.