It’s Snack Time With INXS

INXS

“Welcome to Wherever You Are”

Atlantic * * 1/2

It’s easy to dismiss INXS because of its sketchy, inarticulate lyrics. But the veteran Australian band has no fluency problem with an assortment of purely musical dialects. If the album title’s indeterminacy bespeaks a lack of focus and unifying thrust, it also suggests a musical adaptability that allows INXS to sound at home in its wide-ranging rambles.

“Welcome” tones down the shiny, overt dance-rock that dominated the albums “Kick” and “X,” instead emphasizing density and elaborate textures. Singer Michael Hutchence’s words often get deliberately, psychedelically blurred or dissolved in the mix, which is all to the good. Stylistically, the album sponges smartly. Several cuts dabble in orchestral rock that recalls “All Fools Day,” an exceptional 1987 album by fellow Aussies the Saints. Elsewhere, INXS replicates the ballroom sensuality of Roxy Music’s “Avalon” album, melds rock with funk a la Terence Trent D’Arby, or, on “Heaven Sent,” takes flight nicely with a headlong rocker.

The overblown finale, “Men and Women,” sounds like “The Wall” might have if a tremulous Robin Gibb had fronted Pink Floyd instead of a shrieking Roger Waters. The pompous but catchy anthem “Baby Don’t Cry” and the warm, uncharacteristically subtle “Beautiful Girl” are the pure-pop highlights of this frequently tasty, if insubstantial, snack of an album.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).