Eamon Blog
Today's Shelf Pull: Ash, Teenage Velocity With Its Shoes On
Ash's 1977 is on the shelf today: a 1996 LP where Irish guitar noise, power-pop nerve and young-band certainty all arrive at useful speed.
Some records arrive with a cardigan and a plan.
1977 arrives as if someone has left the school gates open and the guitars have found the road.
Ash are on the shelf today, and the useful thing about this LP is that it still sounds as if it has not been asked to calm down. The sleeve has that black-and-white concrete glare, the Ash logo sitting up top like a sticker from a better notebook, and those blunt 1977 numbers in the corner. It looks half science fiction, half stairwell, which is about right.
This is a 1996 LP from the Irish Artists shelf, and it has the particular energy of a young band discovering that melody and noise do not have to take turns.
