November 2, 2001

Ash : London Camden Monarch

Ash set about demolishing a small room on this planet with a show that'd still sound like a Greatest Hits set if you took all the singles out.

Twelve months ago Ash would've woken screaming from a nightmare like this - playing to a pubful of chattering industry twunts in the Official Home Of Diminishing Returns. But since 'Free All Angels' grew legs and sprinted out of the nation's Megastores faster than a mosher through the Arndale Centre, tonight's secret radio gig is almost mocking fate. It's like having the aversion therapy six months after being cured - hello, our name is Ash and we used to be failurephobic.

Instead they've rocketed from funny-haired burnt-out Mary Chain wannabes to funny-haired superleague pop Goliaths in the space of a year by releasing an album so blindingly brilliant it makes most supernovas look like light bulbs popping. So, while NASA deep space probes search the furthest corners of our galaxy for a British rock band to match them, Ash set about demolishing a small room on this planet with a show that'd still sound like a Greatest Hits set if you took all the singles out. For every 'Goldfinger', 'Kung Fu' or 'Shining Light' there's an equally chart-worthy new album rookie like 'Walking Barefoot' or 'Pacific Palisades'. Tim contorts from glisten-eyed dancehall romantic on 'Sometimes' and 'Oh Yeah' into a snarling, thrashing Wheelerwolf for 'World Domination' and 'Submission'.

You know when your band is firing on all thermonuclear cylinders when you cover your heroes' songs (Ween's 'What Deaner Was Like' andWeezer's 'Only In Dreams') and they sound like Turin Brakes pissing up a particularly limp rope next to your own flame-puking wondertunes. If there's a better guitar pop band on Earth today, this correspondent will eat Andrew WK.

Mark Beaumont