|
Burning
Westlife cds may have looked like Cheap Publicity Stunt
Ahoy! By Downpatrick kids Ash but in doing so they
weren’t necessarily dissing the genre merely the quality
of the acts like Westlife ad nausea. So it is with Free
All Angels that Ash put the Great back into Pop with an
album brimful of summer romance, Broadway sweep and
schoolboy punk.
|
|
Shining
Light demonstrates Ash’s blinding ability to
harness a tune friendly simplistic ode to and give
it epic confidence. See too the flipside tune of
Burn Baby Burn all wig out guitar but never
straggling itself into submission. Cheerleaders
can bop to this. |
The
record company has claimed they could cull 7 singles from
this 13 tracker and listening to it you’d find it
difficult to disagree. This summer’s Sometimes is not so
much radio friendly as it is a complete love-in.
Candy
is the gem at the heart of this machine; all stuttering
drum machine under a swirling whirlpool of a lullaby
sounding like something from Annie - The Musical and
softening it into a refrain that goes “don’t you know
its alright to be alone, you can make it on your own”.
You will melt. Its Siamese twin is the perfect melancholy
of Someday lamenting about “leaving this town, all its
charms, all its harms”. Someday takes its cue from
Somewhere Over The Rainbow and runs with it till its
teenage escapism par excellence.
Don’t
worry; it’s not all soggywoggy. For all the wetness
there’s the bass driven “is she real or just a
dream” lust fest of Cherry bomb with its kiddie punk and
3 minute golden rule. There’s the rally drive speed
Nicole with its bombast chorus “I killed my baby but I
loved her” and the heavy weight Pacific Palisades
weighing in at under two glorious minutes shouting about
the joys of summer and wiping the floor with toilet humour
maestros Blink 182/Wheatus.
Ash
have battled their limitations and come out on top.
Ambition isn’t thwarted; it’s just played to their
strengths. It’s driven towards simple, set- up- camp- in
your brain pop tunes with that spiky punk edge, grand
dramatics and great heart. Fucking quality, as we say up
north.
|
