ASH LIVE @ THE ACADEMY

On our way to the Academy we encountered a load of people dressed like lifeguards with CARNAGE t-shirts on. Wherever they were off to, there certainly wasn't going to be any carnage as Ash were in town and now of them were there. Tonight's show saw them joined by Bloc Party's Russell Lissack who is the band's honourary fourth member for their second A-Z Tour - to commemorate their 26 singles in a year which is now up to N.

Considering Ash's fanbase as being quite large and dedicated - as well as diverse - the show was surprisingly not sold out, maybe everyone had dressed up like lifeguards instead. Daftys.

It's been nearly 20 years since Ash have formed so this show, as usual, had to show the best of each 'era'. Playing new tracks from their A-Z series, they also revisited 1977, did some Kung Fu and played an epic encore featuring Twilight of the Innocents. It has to be said though that for much of the new tracks, the majority of the crowd rarely moved. Could this be that the new stuff isn't faring as well?

The A-Z preview track Return of White Rabbit showed a possible dancier side to Ash which was expected to follow. Single A, True Love 1980, sounded like a space arcade and completely erased expectation. B, Joy Kicks Darkness, was again different and the series began to track back to Ash's love of space. It's always a nice thing to see a band prove they're not just one song - bands that are know who they are, I'm watching you - but sometimes it doesn't work. Having said that, the newer tracks did sound better live and the crowd did seem to be enjoying it. Which is all a band wants.

Ash going back and playing songs like, or basically just forgot that and make it just this one in particular. Meltdown live now seems to be turning into one of those rare treats, a track that gets its time until it's thrown to the bottom of the pile and forgotten about which is a shame because this was one of the tracks that defined who Ash were, showed what they could do, and more importantly came along on an album that also produced Orpheus.

So let's look back on Ash's last 20 years (or if you want to be specific - 18 years) and let them take centre stage, they are still certainly a band worth seeing and is probably one of the most epic performance makers of the year so far.