It has become fashionable for bands to phase one-off shows that revisit a classical album in its entireness. In Ash's case, the only real contender for the treatment is their debut, 1977, which was as uplifting a ingathering of garage-rock as you could accept asked for back in Britpop-dominated 1996. Though thither have been four subsequent albums, the Irish trio have never matched 1977's combination of exuberance, romance and hormones; the outlook of hearing it live resulted in a crammed-full Roundhouse.
Having announced last year that their only future releases will be digital singles, Ash possibly approached this show with mingled nostalgia and resentment. How pleasant can it be to spend an evening being reminded that your creativeness peaked at the age of 19? And it was quite a extremum. Reprised here, 1977 showed itself to have aged well, apart from a few noisy fillers.
The band's entrance was announced by three characters dressed as Darth Vader and Jedi friends - 1977 was, of course, the class of Star Wars - and then it was straight into the album. Now, as then, the singles Goldfinger, Girl from Mars and Oh, Yeah were the stand-outs, suffused with yearning and tune. Still limber and unhinged for it, singer Tim Wheeler asked: "Do you feel like you've changed much since 1996? Because I don't." He hadn't played some of these songs in a ten, he added. That was hard to believe: the band expertly navigated even the sub-metal contours of Let it Flow and Innocent Smile.
After such a joyous visit to the past, nothing more was necessary, but we got it anyway: they encored with a dozen random tracks, from ancient B-sides to Motown covers. It was rather also much of a unspoilt thing, simply who could have begrudged them?
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