ASH | LIVE REVIEW
Y Plas, Cardiff University Students Union, Mon 14 Dec
With a new album out called Kablammo, it’s fitting that Ash deliver such an explosive live set. Incredibly, the band released their first single way back in 1994, and baby-faced singer Tim Wheeler is still a year shy of his 40th birthday. Nevertheless, none of the trio’s energy has diminished despite their approaching middle age.
Wheeler certainly knows how to pick out a riff and he often holds his trusty Flying V aloft in awe of the instrument, as if it’s the guitar that holds the power and not the man behind it. Bassist Mark Hamilton goes one better by jumping into the front rows during the encore and still barely misses a note.
Starting with Go! Fight! Win! off their latest album, the gig bursts into life with a quick-fire salvo of A Life Less Ordinary, Jack Names The Planets and Goldfinger. Despite half a dozen new tracks being aired, the setlist is largely crammed with greatest hits, which is exactly what the majority of the crowd are here for. The classics are understandably given a far better reaction than more recent material, but that still doesn’t deter a relentlessly jumping moshpit.
It’s nice to see Ash in an intimate setting, but with such a good back catalogue the band deserve better than a relatively low attendance in Cardiff University’s second room. Regardless, the crowd make a racket and the trio return the favour with a frenetic performance, packing 24 songs into less than two hours and milking two encores. They even accommodate a fan request by playing early single Petrol.
Sometimes, Orpheus and Shining Light are real stand-out moments, as is the cinematic scope of There’s A Star. Perhaps the best reception of the night is reserved for 1996 classic Girl From Mars – dedicated to Tim Peake, the man who made history this week as the first British astronaut to travel to the International Space Station.
Wheeler is an affable frontman throughout, and the band often demonstrate their lighter side with a jazzy version of John Williams’ Cantina Band from Star Wars, a riproaring run-through of The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks and a comically dystopian festive tune called Zombie Christmas. They even throw in their cover of Welsh cult artist Helen Love’s Punk Boy.
And just when it looks like the curfew is going to beat them, they manage to fit in the definitive Ash song everyone came to hear – Burn Baby Burn.
words NEIL COLLINS photo ALEX LAKE