Ash/ A-Z Vol.1

Ash
A-Z Vol.1
(Atomic Heart)

Ash – the band most likely to continue quietly climbing the stairs while others take the lift. Ah well. Remember when they announced that they weren’t making albums any more and were only going to release singles? Then they went around the country playing a different venue for each letter of the alphabet? Crazy times. These unabashed gimmicks haven’t exactly failed, but they’ve hardly recaptured the sense of abandon that the period of their first two records so happily framed. Now that they’re based in Manhattan and doing lots of silly little pranks on a largely indifferent music industry, what has become of Tim Wheeler’s song writing ability?
The answer, confusingly, is lots of things. He’s still melodically direct and delivers in a delicious nasal voice, but the songs strive for maturity that, strangely, he hasn’t displayed for some time.
Disco experiments like ‘True Love, 1980’ are no match for the weary bastard we heard in old songs like ‘Sometimes’, and even the rootin’ tootin’ pop-punk numbers aren’t quite as fizzing as they used to be.
Having said that, it’s totally commendable that Ash still exist and are clearly having a great deal of fun. They might run out of stairs to climb eventually, but at least they've lasted longer than most of the bands that took the lift. Who knows? Maybe ‘A-Z Vol.2’ will see them continue to climb.