Little over a week before I meet Ash, Tim Wheeler, the band's shyly sanguine front man, stood on the main stage at the Isle Of Wight Festival and proclaimed that the set's closer, the title track from their new album ‘Twilight Of The Innocents,’ was to be “the last song of our final album.” While it might have passed over many of the audience who were roasting gently like human marshmallows in the summer sun, it didn’t go unnoticed by everyone else. “Yeah,” grins a now rather coy Wheeler nine days on, as he recalls the incident. “Well, I didn’t quite realise that so many people would draw conclusions that we would split up and that sort of thing,” he adds, “loads of people on our crew had thought that I’d made a mistake with what I said, but yeah, that is the plan, this is to be the final album and we’re going to change things up from here on.”
Today, Ash – who are now back to their original three piece line-up owing to former guitarist Charlotte Hatherley’s departure last year in a bid forge her own solo career - are in London on the cusp of one of their notoriously hectic promo pushes. From today, they’ll travel the country, undertaking various in-store signings and performances along the way, in support of their latest single, ‘Polaris’ - the second to be lifted from their fifth and “final” studio album. “Even our radio plugger was standing beside our manager when we said it and he was almost in tears, and our manager was going 'no they’re not splitting up!'” reveals, Rick McMurray, the band’s drummer, in his native Northern Ireland lingo, as he recounts his memories of Wheeler’s much publicised comment.
Two days after the Isle of Wight Festival, Ash’s publicists – who’d been put through their paces trying to justify the band’s unexpected announcement - released a statement on the band’s behalf to try and quash the rumours that it was the musical end for Ash. Written by Wheeler, it read: “I believe our new album is the pinnacle of everything we've done thus far, and I'm proud that this will be remembered as our last album. The future lies elsewhere and we can have a lot of fun by changing things up. It's like the Wild West at the moment and a time to take chances and try out new ideas."
This future that the band mention is actually something based very much in the present. For Ash, the future lies, ironically, in the good old fashioned single. “It seems to be going that way and record companies haven’t really reacted to it,” says Mark Hamilton, Ash’s bassist. “You know, people are just going onto iTunes and buying singles or whatever songs they’ve heard at live shows as opposed to whole albums, so it’s kind of pointless.” Wheeler politely interrupts: “The only song you actually keep in your iPod is the singles and stuff. Not that I”…he pauses, before re-arranging his words. “I feel like our albums are complete but it just feels like the times have changed and we want to move with the times because the way people listen to stuff is different.”
As much as people’s stunned reactions might make you think so, this isn’t the first time Ash have appeared defiant, or rather, brave, in terms of embracing modern technology. They used the internet at the turn of the century with the download only release of, ‘Warmer Than Fire,’ in order to try and re-build their career post the relative commercial flop that was their second album, ‘Nu-Clear Sounds.’ And, true to their Irish heritage, not ones to lose a niche, online voting for a b-sides bonus disk soon followed a couple of years later. If anything then, their latest decision – however drastic – in an era when you don’t have to plough through a cassette to find your favourite track is merely the next step.
Wheeler traces the idea back to his apartment in New York, where he moved alongside Hamilton in 2005 following over a year on the road supporting their last album, ‘Meltdown.’ “We’ve definitely got a complete autonomy over there,” he says coolly, sounding like someone who feels completely settled - despite it being thousands of miles from the bands native Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. “It’s a very free and creative city and anything is tolerated. It’s pretty inspiring because there’s a collection of people that have gone there just to make it, so it’s a very exciting place,” he adds fondly.
The band's relocations (McMurray also moved from Belfast to Scotland around the same time) meant that for the first time since they started the band as teenagers, they actually had time to reflect on how things had changed. The experience was irrefutably cathartic. “We didn’t play a gig for over a year, which is like the first time that that’s ever happened,” explains Hamilton. “So just kind of stepping back from that gave us time to grow up as people because you’re living in this bubble of album then touring, album then touring and you kind of get lost in that.”
Hamilton’s words of stunted growth eerily echo the words of his former band mate, Charlotte Hatherley, who left the band ‘amicably’ at the beginning of 2006 in a bid to build on the solo success she had achieved with her 2004 solo album, ‘Grey Will Fade.’ When I interviewed her earlier this year she also talked about the reality that hits hard when you take time out of the band you’ve breathed for so long. Sitting in between his two band mates, Wheeler – who always resembled a brotherly companion to Hatherley on stage – suddenly looks uneasy and his sentences rapidly become short and vague at her mention. “It was tough. Everything seemed to be changing at once and it just seemed to be the right time to make a break you know? We were about to start a new record. We sort of made the decision and then it was a month or so later that we got together and started playing again so it just felt like the beginning of something, you know, time to move on.” I get the impression that that’s as much an instruction to me as it is an explanation for Hatherley’s departure.
Despite their former bandmate's much amplified exit, Ash weren’t – and still aren’t– phased by the prospect of being a three piece again – they had, after all, made their name as a trio with their emphatic 1996 debut album ‘1977.’It was with a renewed and almost teenage like endeavour, therefore, that they entered their purpose-built New York studio – a former home to the Wu Tang Clan and a building which Wheeler had been alerted to by a friend after he’d moved there – so quickly after saying goodbye to Hatherley to record what would become, ‘Twilight Of The Innocents.’
The album begins in a typically and unapologetically energetic Ash way, with an upbeat trio of songs which includes the first single that the band released all the way back in April, ‘You Can’t Have It All.’ It’s from these characteristically pop-powered songs, however, that ‘Twilight Of The Innocents’ takes on a new, rawer musical meaning, with the gaps left by Hatherley being filled with more subtle substitutes. It’s also the point when the album turns into an almost personal liturgy for the band, and particularly Wheeler. “It’s all stuff I was kind of going through the last couple of years. It was very cathartic just working it out. I think, being in New York helps introspect you in a weird way,” sounding confused, he adds. “I don’t know, moving country you’re kind of a bit removed until you get to know lots of people so I spent a lot of time in my head just thinking about things.”
Wheeler’s emotions, for example, are laid bare in the quaint misery of, ‘Shadows,’ and even more vividly in the grasped doom of, ‘End Of The World,’ the latter of which was written as the band toured ‘Meltdown’ - a period in the bands history that he admits to being “quite depressed.” Even this song’s heartfelt lyrics are juxtaposed with an altogether more upbeat and typically Ash musical backdrop, however – some things are just too hard to give up it seems. “It’s weird because it’s a very anthemic song but it’s got all these bleak lyrics. I like dressing up the fucking gloom in something that makes you feel better - musically it’s a cool mix,” admits a smiling Wheeler.
There’s nothing quite like the title track, however, on this album or any of the band’s previous releases. Featuring a complete string orchestra, it’s a song which evokes the same orchestral ambitions as Smashing Pumpkins did on, ‘Tonight Tonight.’ It’s also, with hindsight, seemingly the perfect song to bow out on. “It’s kind of beautiful to be the last song of the last album. Yeah I like that factor of it,” reveals Wheeler. “We kind of put it together backwards, we didn’t quite exactly know which way we were going so we would play something and then cut it up and move it around in the computer and then eventually a structure began to take shape. The final piece is really the orchestra which kind of gave a real fluid to the whole thing.”
The whole band readily admit that they couldn’t have made an album with such ambition the last time they were a three piece. In the past fifteen years, besides the highs, Ash have endured their fair share of unfortunate lows – all of which, however cruel, have shaped their sound today. Most notably, perhaps, their dice with bankruptcy in 2001, where they were only saved by the well-timed commercial success of their third album, ‘Free All Angels.’ “You need to have a couple of falls along the way to keep yourself grounded,” explains a nostalgic Hamilton. “And even though ‘Nu-Clear Sounds’ was seen as a commercial flop, it changed a lot of, especially, critics opinions of us – it gave us a bit more depth because people just thought we were this guitar pop act.” Wheeler nods: “You get a few knocks on the way and it keeps you grounded and down to earth.”
For Ash, ‘Twilight Of The Innocents,’ might be their “final” album, but there’s still a light that’s shining bright within them that’s strong enough to suggest it won’t be the last we hear of them full stop.
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