Twilight of the Innocents is Ash's last album, according to the band. They're not breaking up; they've simply looked at the music marketplace and decided that singles are the way to go in the future. I wonder what their record company will have to say about that, but it's not a terrible idea, financially. If it does come to pass, though, something will be lost, namely the convenient signposting of a band's career that the album format provides.
From album to album, Ash has always been a band that seemingly reacted to itself. They followed up their messy teen-punk debut, Trailer, with a stately, pop-fueled second album, 1977, still their best. From there, they've bounced back and forth between their two sides, though a little of each has always been present. This being their sixth album, it would be reasonable to look at their pattern and expect the pop half of the pop-rock hyphenate to come out on top. It does, though this isn't as direct a turn away from the sound of 2004's rocked-up Meltdown as some of their albums have been from their respective predecessors.
They're back to the original three-piece line-up after the departure of second guitarist Charlotte Hatherley, who released a fine solo album earlier this year. As such, there are a few songs that seem to be attempts to prove they haven't gotten any less muscular amidst the sweeping mid-tempo tracks and brain candy blasts of power pop. Bizarrely, the first two songs sound very much like Supergrass-- the chorus melody of opener "I Started a Fire", with its long, drawn-out phrases laid over charging guitars, is uncannily like something Gaz Coombes would have written. This isn't a bad thing, just odd.
But after those two tracks, you couldn't mistake this for anybody but Ash. They don't always come up in discussions of 1990s pop from the British Isles, but they've actually made quite a career for themselves, consistently releasing good and even great albums, and proving to have improbable staying power. They've always had the melodies to make truly memorable songs, which has certainly helped their cause. Twilight contains three excellent ballads in "Polaris", "End of the World", and "Shadows", all of which fall into a lineage that stretches all the way back to 1977's "Oh Yeah". "Polaris" in particular captures the melancholy feeling of teen anxiety giving way to adult anxiety, but the piano and strings backing Tim Wheeler as he sings "The innocence you've lost will not return" on the chorus don't sound soft. Rick McMurray's aggressive drumbeat is simply too high in the mix for it to ever grow limp.
"Ritual" is cut from the same cloth, but puts a more propulsive spin on it-- the chorus is just gigantic, sweeping the listener clear away from the pensive verses. "Dark and Stormy" is something new for the band; it's more jangly than punky, with a chunky bass line from Mark Hamilton that nicely complements Wheeler's calmly haunting vocal, which makes him sound like he's been listening to Colin Blunstone. There are a couple of strong rockers-- "Blacklisted" especially kicks ass, with massive bass and drums pummeling Wheeler's vocal melody right into your memory.
A few songs go a little too far with the crunching stop-start bits and displays of power, at the expense of songwriting, and the closing title track reaches too hard for a grandiosity it doesn't achieve, but otherwise, this is a good album from a band whose ability to make good albums has long been underappreciated. Is this the last time they'll make one? Time will tell, but on the evidence of the six they've made so far, that would be a shame.
