There was once a touch of Grange Hill about Downpatrick trio Ash. Signed when they were in their teens and sticking to an idiom in which “teenager” was used every three words and school uniforms, summer romance and exuberant experimentation were the order of the day, they somehow retained this youthful aura through six albums of grunge-lite, shredding-rawk-worship, and straightforward poppy pop. Of course, context changes everything. It’s only in the middle of a spirited version of ‘Oh Yeah’ that I realise how time has altered lines like “on warm summer evenings she would come to my house, still in her school skirt and her summer blouse” (it’s a bit more Nabokov than Grange Hill when it’s sung by a 32-year-old).
In fact, Ash’s plan to release 26 singles in a year-long period instead of an album may seem like a reaction to a self-destructing musical business model, but their sales decline could also be related to the Logan’s Run style cult of youth that they’ve hitherto bought into. This is sad, because live Ash perform with a zest and vigour that puts their younger selves to shame. Tim Wheeler has learned how to get much more texture out of a weak voice (sporadically leaving the mike stand to hold his guitar over his head and shred), Rick the drummer and backing vocalist manfully provides most of the dynamics, whilst Mark the bass player twirls and slides and dives about the stage giving us something exciting to look at (this is the main role of a bass-player in a power-pop trio, by the way).
And the pace never dies. They play 18 tracks with songs from every album (‘Kung Fu’ particularly rocks) and then a four-song encore. The audience reacts a little less strongly to the backing-track-heavy newer songs like ‘True Love 1980’, ‘Arcadia’ and ‘Return of White Rabbit’ (“Play something I know!” yells a drunken boor to my left) but that’s probably to be expected when you’re a grown-up band with a long career of pop hits. And whilst he may “sometimes wish it could be summer again,” Tim Wheeler’s clearly got his eye on the future.