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MELTDOWN
(Record Collection)
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This Irish foursome caused a sensation in Great Britain with their 1996 album 1977, a compact blast of fuzz-bomb pop punk named after the year of frontman Tim Wheeler’s birth and the year his all-time favorite film, Star Wars, was released. Since then, Ash have been doing their best to prove they’re not the cute young things early hits like "Kung Fu" and "Girl from Mars" suggested. On Meltdown, which the band recorded in LA with producer Nick Raskulinecz (best known for his work with Foo Fighters and Danzig), they punch up the guitars and drums until they threaten to drown out Wheeler’s voice altogether, and the thick, chewy distortion is a return to the days of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, when young alt-rock stars were figuring out how to make punk’s unrefined roar operate on a major-label recording budget. But Wheeler’s songs do occasionally shine through the high-grade muck — on "Orpheus," he brags of doing nothing but "sleeping, thinking and hanging around" before power-sliding into a buoyant chorus graced by guitarist Charlotte Hatherley’s joyous backing vocals. (Ash and the Bravery appear this Friday, April 15, at Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call 617-228-6000. )
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