Astoria
London, United Kingdom
Show notes
With Hundred Reasons, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, and Jetplane Landing. Part of NME’s 50th Birthday celebrations.
Venue website
Set list
- A Life Less Ordinary
- Angel Interceptor
- Submission
- Goldfinger
- Cherry Bomb
- Shining Light
- Walking Barefoot
- Sometimes
- Oh Yeah
- Kung Fu
- Girl From Mars
- There’s a Star
- Burn Baby Burn
- Nicole
- World Domination
Encore
Review
After the plethora of acoustic guitars which kicked off the NME Carling Shows the night before, it’s very much time to rock. And Jet Plane Landing make a decent stab of it, their Shellac fixation screeching through the building to remind everyone that tonight we’re in for a different kind of entertainment entirely.
Soundtrack of Our Lives up the ante with an astonishing performance, during which singer Ebbot Lundberg (who looks like a cross between Benny from Abba and Brian Wilson - acid-drenched pie-eating phase) walks into the audience and encourages everyone to sit down and erm, look up at the roof. The burly Swede’s charisma more than makes up for the muddy sound, and tunes like the coruscating “Sister Surround” and the delicate “Nevermore” might yet lead to a mass outbreak of kaftan wearing by way of homage.
There are (ahem) literally hundreds of Hundred Reasons T-shirts in the crowd, and the heaving mass at the front go apeshit when their new heroes take to the stage. Hundred Reasons might be associated with the EMO movement, but there’s something else afoot here, an intense, rifftastic barrage which could move mountains. The lyrics are damn near unintelligible, but singer Colin Doran’s howling heroics articulate clearly the angst at the core of this piledriving assault on the ears. It’s been EMOtional.
Most people know the pack drill with Ash. After a career-saving 2001, tonight feels like a celebration, a shared feeling of joy that one of Britain’s best pop bands got their career back. The fact that 1998’s misguided Nu-Clear Sounds is largely ignored in favour of a split between Free All Angels stuff and a batch of early singles shows that Ash know all too well where their strengths lie.
The pace ebbs and flows between the likes of relative softies “There’s a Star” and “Goldfinger” and Pixies-esque pop nuggets like “Burn Baby Burn” and the still fantastic oldie “Jack Names yhe Planets”. And even when they do delve into their darkest period, “Jesus Says” sleazy, grinding riff is speeded up in case the momentum is broken.
“We’d like to thank the NME for dragging us out of early retirement,” chuckles singer Tim Wheeler. Really, the pleasure was all ours.
Review by Alan Woodhouse
Review 2
It is with a certain air of triumph that Ash take to the stage tonight. With the career nosedive that was Nu-Clear Sounds a safe distance behind them, the band are finally free again to celebrate the fact that their last album is really rather good.
The electric atmosphere left by this evening’s support, Hundred Reasons, leaves Ash with something to live up to; the Home Counties teenagers delivering the sort of high energy rock that Tim Wheeler and co often leave behind in their quest for commercial acceptance. They needn’t worry though, for the adoring crowd it seems Ash can do no wrong.
The set tonight is arguably Ash-by-numbers; a flow of melodic pop songs constantly broken up by heavier tracks like, “Numbskull”, “World Domination” and the pounding guitar riff of “Submission”. Ash staples, “Goldfinger”, “Oh Yeah” and “Girl From Mars” are received with nostalgic affection, as is “Angel Interceptor”, a track dedicated tonight to “lost friends, sadly misse”: Zac Foley and Jon Lee.
As the sparkling stage lights begin to do their thing for recent hit single, “Shining Light”, we’re moments away from a messy lighters-in-the-air incident but, thankfully, the crowd resists the urge. Things get a bit soppy with the sing-a-long of “Sometimes” but with a swift trek back into rock territory Ash manage to avoid feeling too much love in the room.
With third album, Free All Angels delivering a barrage of pop songs to the singles chart, it’s easy to forget what lies at this band’s core. A storming mid-set rendition of, “Kung Fu” changes all that though, and for a moment, as the trademark flying-V is balanced on Tim Wheeler’s head, the orchestral strains of “There’s a Star” seem a million light years away.
Ash can be schizophrenic: on the one hand there’s the band with simple melodies and orchestral samples that struggle to offend your Gran; then there’s Ash spinning guitars on their heads and whipping the mosh-pit into an adolescent frenzy. Tonight though, it’s clear that this tension is all part of the band’s well balanced dynamic, the punkier tracks like a hypodermic blast fired just as the crowd is lulled into reverie.
Review from dotmusic