No more “Girl From Mars”

Since their debut album 1977, Ash continue to produce their own brand of punk/pop music, despite coming extremely close to bankruptcy in 1998, after their second album Nu-Clear Sounds – an album that seemed to leave their fans in a state of confusion. Their latest album Meltdown is out now. X-Press gets the latest from guitarist Charlotte Hatherley.

It’s 9am UK time, and a sleepy Charlotte has just emerged with a bad case of the sniffles. Following the release of the single “Orpheus”, the band is getting all geared up to do the UK tour of the new album Meltdown that was recorded in Los Angeles. The album was written on the road as part of the band’s nine-month tour of the US. “The influences were obviously American and I think we wanted to sound like the bands that we’d loved as kids, like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins,” says Charlotte. “We kind of wanted to capture that sound. I think we feel like it’s the most ‘true to Ash’ record we’ve ever made. It’s consistent and its very strong and its kind of exactly what we’re like as a live band.”

Sonically, Meltdown is a lot heavier guitar-wise, compared to previous Ash albums, but melodic at the same time. “Orpheus” is one of the heavier sounding tracks on the album, with the first 20 seconds of the song being quite reminiscent of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “I Am One”. Naturally, the album still has Tim Wheeler’s personal stamp on it, complete with geeky vocals. Meltdown sees the band moving towards a more rock-sounding album that’s ‘very loud,’ as Charlotte describes it.

Ash has left fans confused in the past, going from the poppy, optimistic album “Girl From Mars” to the lyrically dark and depressing album Nu-Clear Sounds. Free All Angels was a return to the happy, pop sound and their new album Meltdown sees yet another album with a darker edge to it. “Free All Angels was definitely a very autobiographical love song that meant to lot to Tim at the time, but he’s gotten very optimistic and he’s written a lot of love songs. I think he found that he’s done that and wanted to do something new, so he’s probably using his imagination a bit more on this album.”

Despite such a fickle music industry, Ash has managed to stay together for 10 years. “I think its because we were never really fashionable. Never in fashion, never out of fashion. We were always just kind of, not really in any scene. Just skirting around in various genres. We don’t really like repeating ourselves. Just keep evolving and experimenting.” The members of Ash started out at quite a young age. Charlotte joined Ash in 1997 and was 18 at the time. But now, she’s a little older and perhaps a little wiser. “I think we’re a lot less naive, personally. I’m definitely a lot more confident and savvy to what’s going on. Like, we totally know what we’re getting ourselves into when we talk about touring and promotion.”

Speaking of growing up, Charlotte says the band has definitely wised up in their attempts to kick past habits of the infamous rock star lifestyle. “We’d just get fucked up all the time. Just a lot of drinking, crazy pot, partying. It’s something we still do, but if we have a 5am flight the next morning I’d probably think twice about it. Whereas a few years ago we were just constantly fucked all the time. We had a great time doing it. I don’t think we’d do that these days. I don’t know. We have our moments.”

Being a female guitarist in the band, Charlotte is aware that the music industry seems to place a lot more focus on the way women look, rather than their talents. But Charlotte feels that it’s more of an issue in the pop world and that she’s had a lot of support, being in the rock/punk-oriented scene. “I don’t feel like I have to dress up, put my make-up on and look pretty, you know. I kind of feel like I can just be myself. I’m not really interested in that side of things too much. You can still be sexy but you don’t have to conform to the way people would expect a female to look like. I hope people don’t really think about that any more in the year 2004.”

Being the only female in the band, Charlotte says she gets a lot of support from her male contemporaries. She hasn’t yet experienced any sexism except for times when the band has turned up for television shows and people say things like, “‘Oh right, so you’re the make-up girl.’ You get stupid stuff like that but for most people who know that I’m in the band, I get nothing but respect. So I’ve been lucky I guess.”

The members of Ash have varying tastes in music from Abba to Black Sabbath to underground dance music. Tim Wheeler writes most of the songs on an acoustic guitar to start off with, which result in strong melodies even on a heavy-sounding album. He also leaves the lyrics to last. Charlotte describes the song-writing process as one that’s quite democratic. “Usually he’ll [Tim] have the melody and then the chords and sometimes I have a riff and they’ll say, ‘I know what will go really well for that,’ or Mark will have a bass line riff.”

Of course, everyone doesn’t always agree with the end result. Bass player Mark and front man Tim Wheeler sometimes have disagreements over sounds, but not so much over the arrangements of songs. “Just like very small arguments. That’s just because they’re both very passionate about it. But me and Rick are a bit more of pacifists.” Surprisingly, its Mark the bass player who usually gets the last say. “It’s always the quiet ones,” Charlotte laughs.