POP AND JAZZ REVIEWS : INXS Fails to Fly in Hangar Concert

An airplane hangar filled with 4,300 people doesn’t exactly conjure the image of intimacy. But for INXS and its fans, the Santa Monica Airport facility served just fine on Saturday as the setting for a “special” concert, as the Australian band joined the growing list of major pop acts looking to build a new buzz with small-scale mini-tours.

INXS isn’t promoting a current record, and seven of the evening’s 23 songs came from an album that’s due in September. The new songs were mostly straight-ahead rockers with typical INXS catchiness, but generally less fussy than the older songs.

After a decade, INXS is still basically a band without a clear identity or personality, save for singer Michael Hutchence’s sexy, post-Jagger swagger, and they did nothing to change that on Saturday. It didn’t help that such older material as “Need You Tonight” and “New Sensation” were played as if by rote, with no new twists to make it a truly unique event.

The Barker Hangar has all the ambience of, well, an airplane hangar, with the sound sometimes getting a bit lost in the cavernous structure. But there’s an appealing casualness to the setting, and with promoters said to be planning more concerts there, it could become an attractive alternative to the Hollywood Palladium and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.