For a band whose average age is still a relatively young 25, it’s surely a massive compliment to Ash and their oh-so-casual ability to write killer pop songs using nothing more than guitar, bass and drums that they have decided to release Intergalactic Sonic 7”s, a definitive collection of the band’s singles to date.
It’s now almost ten years since Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray first played their inaugural London show to a sceptical audience still bewildered by the post-fraggle/grunge fallout and unaware of the massive impact Britpop was set to cause over the ensuing twelve months.
The fact that Ash have outlasted all of these scenes speaks volumes for the way they have developed from being the token “rock band at our school” to the platinum album selling festival headliners they are today.
Whilst some of the early singles (“Petrol” and “Uncle Pat”) can be dismissed as nervous, fey indie warblings, the likes of “Jack Names the Planets” and “Kung Fu” provided strong hints at what the band were capable of achieving, and by the time their debut album 1977 was released, they’d already chalked up three top ten hits (“Girl From Mars”, “Angel Interceptor” and “Oh Yeah”).
As a finale to “Ash: The Definitive Story Part 1“, one could have almost forgiven them for calling it a day there and then - after all, what else could they possibly hope to achieve? Enter Charlotte Hatherley and the beginning of “…Part 2”. With the band now expanded to a four piece Ash became a rock beast overnight at least three years before rock became fashionable again, and while Nu-Clear Sounds may not go down in history as everyone’s personal favourite Ash album, it did spawn a couple of killer singles in the Mary Chain-esque “Jesus Says” and the Beach Boys meets AC/DC playground stomper “Wild Surf” before they went into a self imposed hiatus for about two years.
Despite neither the album or any of it’s singles selling particularly well, the band returned in early 2001 and had two of their biggest hits to date with “Shining Light” and “Burn Baby Burn”, before releasing their most successful album to date Free All Angels, which spawned a further three hit singles.
Current single “Envy” is also included on here, fuelling the assumption that “Ash…Part 3” is just waiting to burst into life any minute. Intergalactic Sonic 7”s is one of the most near-perfect collections you’ll hear all year, and something anyone with any interest in killer tunes should own. Christmas appears to have come three months early this year.
Rating: 5/5