The second single from Meltdown was inspired by the tale of the titular “starcross’d lovers” from Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Young, doomed love had indeed been one of Ash’s key themes throughout their career, so this should have been home territory for the band. Sadly, they chose the laziest of power ballads in which to re-cast the classic story, and the whole thing positively reeked of cynicism. Ash had made similarly slow-paced singles before to differing degrees of success – the string-swept beauty of ‘Oh Yeah’ to the rather more cloying ‘Candy’ – but ‘Starcrossed’ was the musical equivalent of empty calories, a saccharine blancmange of a song that was well below Wheeler’s personal standards. Ugh.
Another example of an unsuccessful attempt by Ash at a slow-paced, lighters-aloft power ballad, this was the final single from the bland Twilight Of The Innocents album. Featuring synthesised drum beats, delicate acoustic guitar and no small amount of strings, ‘End Of The World’ telescopes out from an intimate setting to a grandiose ending via a schlocky key change. Just like its parent album, it critically lacks distinguishing features and is nothing you haven’t heard a hundred times before by a hundred other artists. Clearly designed to be a mid-album change of pace, it should probably have been left alone.
A stand-alone single tying in with their first greatest hits compilation Intergalactic Sonic 7”s, ‘Envy’ was a disposable, by-the-numbers Ash track that one feels would never have been green-lit for a single release if it had come from one of their actual studio albums. The sound of a band operating in second gear, there’s really nothing wrong with it per se – it belts along at a fair old pace and with no shortage of volume, with Charlotte Hatherley’s vocals chasing Wheeler’s all the way – but a song whose chorus merely repeated its title over and over again just seemed like they weren’t trying particularly hard. Fair enough, Ash had earned the right to rest on their laurels, but it’s one of their most forgettable singles.
Holding the sad distinction of being the last song Ash ever recorded with Charlotte Hatherley, ‘Renegade Cavalcade’ bustled its way to a lowly #33 in the busy Christmas period before sinking without trace. Released a full five months after its predecessor ‘Starcrossed’, it possibly underperformed through lack of promotion, but in fairness it was a sub-par effort by Ash standards, whose attempted Pixies-esque loud/quiet dynamics were hobbled by some pretty lame Wheeler lyrics (“feel the voodoo in my brain / sipping on a hurricane”? Please).
Ash’s first single after Hatherley’s departure saw them attempt to recapture the energy of their youth – which was odd, considering the group were all still in their twenties – but also update it with the production values of mid-noughties indie, and ‘You Can’t Have It All’ was the result. A bold guitar riff was unconvincingly welded to a mechanical, pounding indie-disco beat and subtle flourishes of electronics, and while it was quite catchy, it certainly doesn’t register as a prime cut. Sadly, this musical identity crisis seemed to point to a central uncertainty in the band about which direction they should head in, and this bled through into Twilight Of The Innocents as a whole.
A breezy and disciplined guitar-pop cut from their triumphant comeback Kablammo!, ‘Machinery’s lyrical themes on the surface concerned some kind of dystopia (“oblivious to the 21st century… …unconscious of a dark machinery”) but fell into the standard Ash paradigm of Wheeler’s senses being inflamed by some mystery girl. Completely unexceptional in comparison to previous work, but it showed that Ash still knew their way around a good power-pop song, and is upholstered by some understated keyboard that hugs closely to the guitar line.
Prominently built on a swelling sample of The Walker Brothers’ ‘60s hit ‘Make It Easy On Yourself’, the fourth single from Free All Angels was a heroically flawed but quite entertaining attempt to break new artistic ground for the band, based primarily around piano and strings. Though it was bottomlessly soppy and kitsch as hell – the band even appeared on ‘Top of the Pops’ in white dinner jackets to mime it unconvincingly – ‘Candy’ remains a memorable curio in Ash’s extensive canon of hit singles. That it should be this far down the list is testament to how unusually excellent they were at making them.
Hitting the traditional Ash sweet spot between raw guitar energy and sweet melody, ‘Cocoon’ was their first single off an actual album for nearly eight years, and positively roared out of the traps as the opening track from Kablammo!. Opting for economy over grandiosity, McMurray laid down a sleek chassis for Wheeler’s guitars as the track races along at breakneck speed like a supercar hitting top gear. A short fix of pop-punk, it wasn’t the most memorable of Ash songs but, crucially, it was the sound of a group getting back to basics and reminding the world about what they can do.
Recording a follow-up to the stupendous success of 1977 proved to be an extremely difficult task for the band, notwithstanding the brilliant ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. Wheeler, still barely out of his teens, suffered with writer’s block and the fatigue of endless touring had left him creatively drained as the group rushed to capitalise. ‘Jesus Says’ was the grungey introduction to Nu-Clear Sounds they eventually unleashed on the world, and its rawer, noisier sound was one which turned off a lot of the fans they had won. Some Ash fans still like it, but it was a hard song to really love, and it performed below expectations in the chart.
Squeezing the very last drops out of Free All Angels with a Christmas single, ‘There’s A Star’ turned out to be a surprise hit for the band, despite it being the fifth cut from an album that had already sold 500,000 copies and the fact that it was deleted after only a week. One of Ash’s more atmospheric moments, possibly more suited for some alternative James Bond theme and laden with perfunctory strings, it was actually intended for Nu-Clear Sounds but failed to make the cut, then rescued from the scrapheap by producer Owen Morris. Quite why they didn’t plump for the incredible ‘Walking Barefoot’ as a single release was odd, but demonstrated the strength of material Ash had at their disposal at this moment in time.
A staple in their live set to this day, the summery folk-pop feel of ‘Sometimes’ is a firm fan favourite and showcased Ash’s lighter, more disposable side. Featuring a sugar-sweet melody counterpointed with Wheeler’s resigned, sad lyrics about love and lust naturally petering out to indifference, it didn’t quite have the heft of Free All Angels’ lead singles ‘Shining Light’ or ‘Burn Baby Burn’, substituting the pure adrenaline rush of the archetypal Ash single for something a little more slow-burning.
The undisputed highlight from Kablammo! amid its fast-paced pop themes, ‘Free’ was a lesser-spotted successful attempt by Ash at a slower number. In contrast to their usual maximalism, even in full-blown power ballads like ‘Starcrossed’, restraint was the order of the day here, as guitar strings were dampened, drums muffled and things allowed to develop naturally to a crescendo. Wheeler’s vocal range gets a full work-out and an intricate, modest guitar solo steals the limelight as Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray provide an unintrusive, dynamic backdrop to an understated gem that shows a different side to the band.
Written on a piano in Bono’s holiday house in the south of France, ‘Polaris’ was a beautiful example of Ash laying off the raw power and letting melody take control. Featuring the kind of pop-oriented piano riff that makes sporting montage compilers drool, it reached a powerful climax without resorting to the kind of power-ballad bombast that some of their other slower tracks suffered from, and it really ought to have been the lead single from Twilight Of The Innocents instead of the squalid ‘You Can’t Have It All’. It was also one of Ash’s best-performing singles in America, where it reached an impressive #34 in the Billboard Hot 100.
Tags: Ash, Ash singles, Charlotte Hatherley, Ed Biggs, from worst to best, Mark Hamilton, Rick McMurray, singles, Tim Wheeler
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