Ash's alphabetic year set to leave fans spellbound

Published on Friday 16 October 2009 19:04

EVEN in this brave new digital age, in which musicians are embracing alternative ways of networking with their fans and record companies are trying to figure out how to avoid obsolescence, it takes an adventurous band to relinquish the time-honoured tradition of releasing albums.

Recently though, Irish power pop trio Ash announced their intention to lay off the albums forever. Instead, they will concentrate on producing singles at a time when that previously unfavoured format is enjoying a resurgence through download sales.

"We had a crap experience putting out our last album on a major label, as the whole thing was crumbling," says frontman Tim Wheeler. "It put me off albums and also it was getting creatively uninspiring. We wanted to play to our strengths – we're good at writing songs that stand up by themselves."

Over the next year, Ash intend to prove their credentials as a strong singles band by releasing one every fortnight, each corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet.

"We figured 26 was enough of a challenge to push ourselves but also one that we could pull off," says Wheeler. The onslaught kicked off on Monday with their "A" release, True Love 1980. Each single is available for download, or as a limited seven-inch release, with an etching on the B-side. Some of the old ways are clearly worth preserving. Fans can even take out ye olde subscription, "a kick-ass bargain" according to Wheeler, at 13 for all 26 songs. It's good old clever marketing for the digital generation.

"I'm hoping this will establish a great connection between us and our fans," enthuses Wheeler. "Hopefully, it will make our website the main place people will come to buy our music. You have this amazing portal that's direct between you and the fans. It could become this cool new medium instead of albums."

Wheeler had already dabbled with the notion of something more immediate, setting up a website a few years ago with the intention of anonymously posting a new track every month. He managed one track before, ironically, being distracted by the need to record an album.

This time, the band are doing everything their way through their own label Atomic Heart and already have more than 40 songs to choose from. Wheeler reckons they have settled on about 90 per cent of the singles but wants to leave the door open for more recording at the start of next year.

"It's been very freeing not having to tie it all up into an album," he says. "Whenever you would put an album out and start getting feedback, you'd be itching to get back in the studio because you'd been working in the dark for a long time and all of a sudden you're hearing what people are thinking, you're flooded with ideas – and then at that point you have to go on tour for a year and a half.

"It's creatively restricting and that's the thing we were trying to get away from. I wanted this to be something different from doing an album, so the beautiful thing is that we can tweak and add songs, and if we write a killer one we can put it in there and replace stuff. It's flexible, we can work with it as it goes along."

Now the band have stepped off the album-tour-album treadmill, they feel they have recaptured the buzz of their early years. "One of my favourite times in the band was before we put out our debut album," says Wheeler.

"We were at school and didn't have time to record a full album so we put out a string of singles – Kung Fu, Girl From Mars, Angel Interceptor and Goldfinger – and I loved the way that we were changing people's perception of us as we went along. That was a really exciting time, so I wanted to capture that fun as well. We can really surprise people every two weeks. We've been doing a lot of experimenting. We've got some stuff that's really different sounding for us."

Although the band decided that making up song titles starting with each different letter of the alphabet (in order) "would have been getting too OCD", that hasn't stopped them embarking on an accompanying 26-date A-Z tour of the nation's lesser-visited towns and venues, which gets under way on Monday in Aldershot.

It includes three consecutive dates in Scotland – Dundee, East Grange (near Forres) and Falkirk – starts winding down in Upper Norwood (in London, since you asked), Ventnor (Isle of Wight) and Exmouth (cheating…) before the final bash in a village hall in Zennor (Cornwall).

Wheeler freely admits that he doesn't know what he is getting himself into, but that's surely the virtue of the whole eccentric idea.

"I'm hoping other bands pick up on it and try something similar," says Wheeler. "It would be cool if someone like U2 did something like this after us. But bigger machines are sometimes harder to turn…"

&149 Ash play Fat Sam's, Dundee, 23 October; The Loft, East Grange 24 October and Behind the Wall, Falkirk 25 October. For more details visit: www.ash-official.com