There’s something wonderfully familiar about seeing the words Ash and Rosemount Hotel together again. My own history with the band in Perth goes all the way back to the Big Day Out in 1999, but since Ash played their first proper WA club show here at the Rosemount in 2013, the place has effectively become their home from home in the west. Every subsequent Perth show has been here, and each Australian tour since has either opened or closed out west.
This year we get something even more special. Tomorrow night Ash head down the road to Fremantle to play Fre.Social, meaning that at a time when far too many international bands either don’t make it across the Nullarbor at all or give us a solitary date, Western Australia gets to see Ash twice. No other state gets that on this tour, and I’m guessing at least half of the people packed into the Rosie tonight will be doing it all again tomorrow.
And packed it certainly is. Drinks are flowing, great vantage points at the back are increasingly difficult to find — but then we all know that about the Rosemount — and you could cut the anticipation with a sword. There are plenty of younger faces scattered amongst the forty and fifty-somethings too, which perhaps says as much about the enduring appeal of the record we’re here to celebrate as anything else.
First though, we have Unicorn, and there are some forms of Alternative Rock that really haven’t fundamentally changed in forty years. That’s not necessarily a criticism. Get the balance right and there’s still more than enough edginess to engage and enough melody to get an Ash crowd nodding along appreciatively, and Unicorn get that balance pretty much right.
There are elements of 80s Alternative Rock in there, plenty of 90s attitude and, if you dig a little deeper, even touches of late-70s New York New Wave. New song “Stardust”, which rather oddly isn’t coming out until next year, sounds noticeably lighter against some of the grungier material that precedes it and shows another side to the band. Amongst the riffs and grit, Unicorn can turn their hands to some rather nice quirky Pop too.
All in all there’s a nice variety to the sounds Unicorn make, and they close with latest single “Sweet Ride”, a nice riff rocker that sends them off with another appreciative response from a crowd that is now very much ready for the main event.
Ash, of course, released the rather wonderful Ad Astra last year. There are posters and vinyl on the merch stand to remind us of that, but the focus down under this time is firmly on thirty years of 1977. As a seasoned Ash concert-goer, both in the UK in the 90s and Australia since 1999, as much as I love 1977 — surely one of the greatest Rock albums of the 90s — I’m just as big a fan of what this band is doing now. So yes, I want 1977, but I don’t want only 1977. Thankfully Ash have that covered.
At 9.15 the band takes the stage and immediately it all feels familiar. Despite the miles travelled to get here, Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray look in fine fettle. We even get the spoken-word introduction to The A-Team and a snatch of Star Wars before things get underway, a nice fit with the Star Wars-themed tour artwork and, of course, an album whose very title nods to the year Star Wars first appeared.
Then those opening notes hit and behind me, in what might be the world’s smallest mosh pit, everyone is screaming. “Lose Control” gets us underway, “Goldfinger” follows, and then comes “Girl From Mars”, three songs into the evening and already one of those moments where band and room simply become one.
Ash have always been a band of relatively few words onstage. They’ve never needed lengthy monologues when the songs can do the talking for them, and after those opening three Wheeler finally asks the question whose answer everyone already knows: “Who wants to hear all of our debut album 1977?” The response is fairly conclusive.
“I’d Give You Anything”, “Gone the Dream”, “Kung Fu”, “Oh Yeah”, “Let It Flow”, “Innocent Smile”, “Angel Interceptor”, “Lost in You” and finally “Darkside Lightside” follow as Ash play 1977 from beginning to end. And thirty years after its release, it still works remarkably well.
That might sound like a ridiculously simple assessment, but thirty years is a long time. Plenty of records celebrated as classics are really collections of a few immortal singles surrounded by songs that have become increasingly difficult to remember. 1977 isn’t one of those records. Of course “Girl From Mars”, “Goldfinger”, “Kung Fu”, “Oh Yeah” and “Angel Interceptor” are the songs everybody knows, but hearing the album played this way reminds you just how much there is between them.
Years ago, in this same room, I described 1977 as an album written to be played live to a “sweaty, effervescent and expectant capacity room,” and nothing I see tonight gives me any reason to change that assessment. The Rosemount sounds great, as it invariably does, and Ash sound huge. Wheeler still somehow manages to make guitar, melody and distortion coexist, Hamilton remains one of Rock’s great visual bass players, and McMurray drives the whole thing from behind with seemingly effortless power.
There’s also something rather wonderful about just how much noise these three people can make after all these years playing together. Ash were kids when they created these songs and they’re obviously not kids anymore, and neither are most of us standing in front of them, but there’s nothing remotely tired about the way 1977 sounds tonight.
The crowd tells its own story too. Some of those here tonight presumably bought the record in 1996, while some of the younger faces in the room weren’t even born when it came out. For the duration of these songs none of that particularly matters. Thirty years on, 1977 no longer seems to belong exclusively to the generation that first bought it; it just belongs to everyone in the room.
What I’m particularly pleased about tonight is that “Darkside Lightside” isn’t the end of the story. As much as I adore 1977, Ash have never stopped being a creative band, and I’ve no interest in pretending that everything they’ve done since 1996 is somehow secondary. So getting another nine songs is a very welcome prospect.
“Zarathustra”, “Fun People” and “Ad Astra” bring us right up to date, and perhaps most pleasingly the newer material goes down particularly well. Congratulations, Rosemount, because that matters. Anniversary shows can sometimes turn into exercises in nostalgia where anything recorded after the audience’s favourite period becomes an opportunity to head to the bar, but not tonight. The Ad Astra material earns its place alongside songs that people in this room have lived with for decades.
“A Life Less Ordinary” then takes us elsewhere in Ash history before “Shining Light” provides another of those wonderful communal moments. “Jump in the Line” leads into the gloriously early “Jack Names the Planets”, before “Orpheus” reminds us just how much ground this supposedly simple three-piece has covered over the years. Then there’s really only one way to finish the night, and “Burn Baby Burn” duly delivers it.
Tonight we dipped into ’77 and ’96, but this never felt like an evening trapped in either year. Nostalgia is certainly part of the attraction — it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise when hundreds of people have gathered to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of an album many of us first heard when we were considerably younger — but nostalgia alone doesn’t make a room react like this.
It doesn’t explain the younger faces or why the new songs get the reception they do, and it certainly doesn’t explain why Ash keep coming back. I first saw this band in Perth in 1999, and since their first Rosemount club show in 2013 this room has become their Perth home. There’s something special about the fact that after all these years they still start or finish their Australian adventures out west, and this time they’re even giving us two shows.
Tonight, with 1977 turning thirty, Ash sounding in magnificent shape, the Rosemount packed and those songs pouring out of the PA once again, there really was nowhere else I would rather have been. For a couple of hours we dipped back into 1977, 1996 and all the years in between, and for those couple of hours the Rosemount was the only place to be in Perth.
If you’re in Fremantle tomorrow, you’re in for a hell of a show, and watch out East Coast — Ash is on the way.
ASH – ROSEMOUNT HOTEL SETLIST
1977: Lose Control / Goldfinger / Girl From Mars / I’d Give You Anything / Gone The Dream / Kung Fu / Oh Yeah / Let It Flow / Innocent Smile / Angel Interceptor / Lost In You / Darkside Lightside
Plus: Zarathustra / Fun People / Ad Astra / A Life Less Ordinary / Shining Light / Jump In The Line / Jack Names The Planets / Orpheus / Burn Baby Burn
