Oh, we'd stay up late playing cards

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

04/08/96 : 1977 - Ash

I always think I like Ash on the back of the singles from this album, but all other exposure has been remarkably underwhelming - I bought Nu-clear Sounds on the back of them, but was exceedingly unimpressed.  I think I listened to this album at part of the #AOTD exercise at work but never wrote it up, so am pleased to get the chance here.

And yeah, on the whole, it's a pleasant enough experience with the high points being particularly high.  "Goldfinger" has a nice expansive sound to it (it's quite shoe-gazey actually) and "Girl From Mars" and "Kung Fu" barrel along nicely.  Some of the other tracks are a bit randomly noisy for my liking, but I appreciate that other people go for such things.  In terms of ownership, this is a bit of an odd one because I did own it as I bought it many years later (after I'd got over the disappointment of Nu-clear Sounds) but I'm not sure I ever listened to it before I decided I never would and threw it away - but an own is an own taking us to 9/22.

We've dropped out of the top ten again this week at #11 on their 13th week of a 27 week run, having (amazingly) debuted at #1.  It managed six more weeks in the charts across five runs in 1997, 1998, 2001 and (bizarrely) July 2022.  The top five this week were Alanis, Ocean Colour Scene, The Smurfs, Crowded House and Celine Dion.  The highest new entry is the slightly odd concept of Alice In Chain's MTV Unplugged (#20) - I suspect I'm fine without that in my life.  And the next one is Sex Pistols Live (#26) - what was going on this week?  I'm going to give Tribe Called Quest (#28) a name-check for having the next one because at least it's a proper album, even if it's unlikely to be right up my street.

Back to Ash, Wikipedia has far more on the album that I was expecting (256 milliPeppers).  It was quite an interesting read - most of it dives deep into the meaning of each track, most of which is particularly random.  It's interesting to see it described as a Britpop album - I'm not sure I agree with that tag.  The critics liked it - "an album by the young, for the young" seems a very accurate description to me and it made a lot of "best of 96" lists.  It did well commercially over here and slightly better than you might expect in mainland Europe, but didn't exactly set the world on fire.  I was interested to see Lisa Moorish provide backing vocals on "Oh Yeah" who was on the fringes of the music scene for many a long year - particularly due to her "interesting" choices of baby-fathers (Liam Gallagher and Pete Doherty).

Overall, this is a variable album but that doesn't detract from its merits for me - it's quite nice to see them just having a go at stuff.  And the best bits are very lively and infectiously joyful - the boys were living their best life.  So, I enjoyed it (and will try to listen to it again at some point)

28/07/96 - Not an album anyone needs in their life
11/08/96 - A nice voice