REVIEW: Ash, Nu-Clear Sounds (Dreamworks)
- Robin Lapid
You could say that Ash's Nu-Clear Sounds reflects a band that has grown into their age, but please keep in mind that the oldest member is all of 23. The release of the Trailer ep and then debut album 1977 witnessed a trio of Irish upstarts and former metalheads making smarter, catchy Buzzcockian punk-pop, a sound with the guitar amps set to 11 and affixed to singer-guitarist Tim Wheeler's wispy vocals, perfectly suited to hard-edged teen anthems dedicated to Jackie Chan. If you caught them on tour for that album, you would be schooled in the art of boys being boys, with, say, drinking and drug debauchery in Thailand sandwiched in the press clippings alongside mock-street fights with "Britpop" tour buddies Elastica. The music was just as fun, but at some point you would expect a little teen spirit burn-out.
Three years later and the all-boys trio are now a co-ed quartet, a little older, a little wiser, still given to a certain puckishness in their music but more audibly concentrated on making the sound consistent and dynamic. Nu-Clear Sounds is a fine album, the refined result of post-teen rockstar life lessons, some Iggy and the Stooges and New York Dolls on the "what's in my CD player" now list, and Ash's proven penchant for catchy pop.
There's plenty of glam-punk, heavy-artillery riffage here, provided by able-bodied guitarist and latest addition Charlotte Hatherley. "Jesus Says" heads off the U.S. release (the earlier U.K. and elsewhere version has a different track listing) with some infectious "ooh ooh ooh" refrains and exuberantly glittery guitar licks, chronicling the headiness of a rollercoaster tour stop in New York City, "a million light years from home." For a group still so young in years, Wheeler and company sound smarter than your average boy punk band, and possess an unfailing knack for pogo-inducing hooks with telling lyrics like "Fate is your enemy, rebel against your destiny; got a beautiful face, kind of fucked-up inside." There's also slight remnants of their predilection for hyperbolic, hesher-esque rawk-outs ("Numbskull's" first lyric, for example, is "Owwwwww!!!").
Adding a weightier tone to the album are quite a few lovely ballads that tackle more contemplative themes apart from love -- think teenage popstar existentialism. But the band pull it off with a heartfelt, amiable charm on tracks like "Burn Out" and "Folk Song," a melancholic number that has a wizened-sounding Wheeler whispering about heaven and springtime "slipping away," continuing with allusions to an emotional downward spiral after endless touring and the turning wheels of "Top of the Pops"-style stardom. "Wild Surf" is fluffy and light as a beach ball, a Cliffs Notes rendition of 1977 tracks like "Girl From Mars" and "Angel Interceptor." "A Life Less Ordinary," a track written for the Danny Boyle movie of the same name, ends the U.S. release on an optimistic note, with an innocent airiness that made the band's early singles so appealing.
Nu-Clear Sounds reveals a band with a little more consistency in its music, a sense of maturity -- or else a decreased probability that twenty minutes after the last track you will hear the sound of drunk guys puking, followed by guys laughing at each other's puke -- with incidental meanderings into the kind of catch-all pop that reassures you Ash are still messing with their sound and allowing themselves a little youthful range to rawk out.
