Tour Dates

04/15/10 Absolute Radio London
04/17/10 Rough Trade Instore, London
04/19/10 Southampton University
04/20/10 Cambridge Junction
04/21/10 Waterfront Norwich
04/23/10 Irish Centre Birmingham
04/24/10 Leeds Metropolitan University
04/25/10 O2 Academy Newcastle
04/27/10 O2 ABC Glasgow
04/28/10 Academy 2 Manchester
04/30/10 O2 Academy Bristol
05/01/10 Concorde 2 Brighton
05/02/10 O2 Academy Oxford
05/04/10 Electric Ballroom London
05/05/10 Roadmender Northampton
05/06/10 Koko London
05/13/10 Point FMR Paris
05/14/10 Sugar Factory Amsterdam
05/15/10 Luxor Cologne
05/16/10 Logo Hamburg
05/17/10 C-Club Berlin
05/19/10 John Dee Oslo
05/20/10 Vox Hall Aarhus
05/22/10 59:1 Munich
05/23/10 Flex Vienna
05/25/10 Abart Zurich
05/26/10 Roehre Stuttgart
05/27/10 Batchkapp Frankfutt
05/28/10Botanique Brussels

Of course, being a fan of of all-things-Britpop, I do love Ash. They were a little band out of Northern Ireland, who were big Star Wars nerds and wrote power rock/pop songs about Kung Fu movies and cute love songs like “Girl From Mars”. My first record by them was 1977, and eventually tracked down Trailer, but admittedly was not a fan of their debut album – save for the catchy “Jack Names The Planet”.

Since 1996, I’ve bought every album they’ve released. I imported a copy of Nu-Clear Sounds, only to repurchased it when it was released domestically – mostly because there were alternate remixes of five tracks (plus it had a different cover artwork). I bought Free All Angels twice, because I eventually saw them on tour and just wanted something for them to autograph (since I didn’t bring along my original copy).

With Meltdown, I was smart and did just wait for them to release the album domestically. I waited for Twilight of the Innocents, but their final album was never officially released in the US. I’ve often thought about buying an import copy, but I suppose I never got around to it.

Then about two years ago, Ash said that they weren’t going to release albums anymore. That they were just going to release singles. So born The A to Z Series. Every two weeks, the band recorded and release a song, a total of twenty-six tracks over the course of one year.

The idea behind the project was that since they were all going to be singles, that they’d all be strong tracks. Was their theory correct? Sort of.

Since each song is a strong contender for radio play, it just seems that when they collect them (tracks A to M) into an album, A-Z Vol. 1, it feels a little even to me. With a lack of slow songs to space out the tracks, it just feels a little boring to me sometimes. But then again, the idea was that you were supposed to collect each song and were meant to consume them one at a time, over a course of two weeks.

After listening to part one over and over again, I can tell you that these songs have a very “back to basic” sound to them. Nothing too complicated (although there is an occasional experimental sound at the beginning of a song). Perhaps this is because the band no longer has Charlotte Hatherley?

If you’re not quite ready to commit to subscribing to Ash’s single club, I mean $20-ish dollars for songs that’s not recorded yet or another $20 to import the compilation CD, I can guide you to check out the free “Prequel” single, “Return of White Rabbit”, single A “True Love 1980” and single H “Space Shot” – you can preview these songs at their official website.

If you haven’t heard Ash in a while, I can tell you that hearing Tim Wheeler’s vocals is like hearing an old friend. You can pick up A-Z Vol. 1 on April 19^th, 2010. For track listing and additional details, head over to ash-official.com. Currently, they are going on tour, highly successful from the looks of some big shows selling out.