Can it really be almost 30 years since Ash thundered into our lives with their single-laden debut Number One album 1977? Well that’s what my calendar is telling me so it must be true.
And we join the proverbial Peter Pans of indie-pop at a potentially tricky time – their last couple of albums, I think it’s fair to say, have been a touch formulaic; there’s always the handful of their usual catchy singles but with more than a dash of filler; however their last effort Race The Night showed signs of them sparking back into life, and tellingly, there’s only a two year gap between that and Ad Astra (a short gap by their standards).
So, after all this time, does the world need a 9th proper Ash long player? Well it seems that Ash have decided that they do, and they have chosen to rip up their current playbook and go back to basics, to the formula that made them everyone’s third favourite band (seriously, do you know anyone who doesn’t like Ash?)
For thickos like me who didn’t know, Ad Astra means ‘to the stars‘ and both its artwork (the three members sat in spaceman attire) as well as its opener ‘Zarathustra’ set the theme of the album (or so you think); it’s a cover of the dramatic music from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which ,when you think about it, is surprising that it’s taken them so long to cover. So, so far, so very Ash.
But what follows next is something of a surprise, it’s as if they’ve asked Chat GPT to write them a song in the guitar style of Johnny Marr’s The Queen Is Dead era, in the form of ‘Which One Do You Want?‘, and it turns out that Ash do jangle marvellously, it’s quite the delight, and the pop doesn’t stop there, as it rolls straight into another guitar masterclass, this time from their actual real-life Britpop-era chum Graham Coxon, on ‘Fun People’, which he sings on and shreds throughout (and he’ll be back later).
They can even make songs written about lockdown (lead single, ‘Give Me Back My World’) sound like fun, and fun is very much in evidence here, they feel like they are enjoying things again whilst taking themselves less seriously than of late, like they’ve let their musical handbrake off.
‘Hallion‘, sounds like it came straight from 1998’s hit-filled Free All Angels, regressing into the youthful Ash of old (there are some sketchy rhymes in there though), before the six minute epic ‘Deadly Love‘ has a sparkle about its guitar sheen, a feel of almost U2-like epicness but without any shred of pomposity.
The perfect example of their renaissance comes in the form of ‘Jump In The Line’, which is an irony free cover of the Beetlejuice classic, which would normally have been something that would have remained just a song to play for a laugh live, but fits in the overall mood of the positivity on offer here.
And even when they eventually do slow it down on the lovely ‘My Favourite Ghost‘, the orchestral levels take it somewhere new, and there’s no rehashing of old trusted mid-tempo methods here.
‘Dehumanised’ is the best thing on here, managing to sound like pretty much every Ash record mixed into one with Rick McMurray‘s drumming making it an instant classic, which I cannot wait to see live, before Coxon appears again on the title track closer, which, after thinking that space was going to be the theme of the whole album, is the only other time (apart from the opener) where it comes into being, and he’s even more ‘Graham Coxon’ on this, his distinctive vocals and guitar given free rein to elevate what is already in essence just a great pop song.
If you fell out of love with Ash or just stopped listening to them over the last few years, then Ad Astra is the perfect jumping back in point, a flab-free set to behold.
With all due respect to them, I don’t think that many people had Ash making one of the most joyous, carefree and delightful records of the year on their bingo card. But that’s exactly what they’ve pulled off with Ad Astra. They reached for the stars, and by gosh, they’ve reached them.
Ad Astra is out now on Fierce Panda.
