words and photos – @killer.solo.music
Oscar The Wild lit the fuse, ASH set the place smiling, and by the time “Burn Baby Burn” hit, nobody was interested in going home.
There are gigs where you stand around politely watching a band.
And then there are nights where you walk out of the venue wondering what the fuck just happened.
Tuesday night at Lion Arts. Im still trying to work out why the grin has not left my face and the opening riff of Burn Baby Burn is planted deep in my brain on repeat.
Oscar The Wild hit the stage first and immediately gave me the feeling that I’d somehow missed the memo on a band I should have already known. First time seeing them, and definitely not the last. The songs were tight, ridiculously catchy and delivered with enough punch to get the room moving early.
The bass player was solid as fuck, the vocalist had the kind of banter that makes a room feel like it belongs to the band, and when they dropped “Sunrise”, the whole thing just clicked. It sounded DOPE as fuck live and was easily one of my highlights of the set.
Then came ASH.
And holy shit.
The Irish rock veterans tore through 1977 from start to finish, before diving into the greatest hits and reminding everyone in the room exactly why these songs have survived all these years.
I’ve been an ASH fan since seeing them at the Big Day Out in 1999, so there wasn’t exactly any convincing required here. I’ve always loved what this band does. The songwriting is clever without disappearing up its own arse, ridiculously catchy without being disposable, and make’s intelligent songs that still lodge themselves in your brain for days.
Loose Control. Girl From Mars. Kung Fu.
Absolute weapons.
But the real bastard of a finish was “Burn Baby Burn.”
By then Lion Arts was basically one enormous grin with a PA system attached. The energy never let up. From the opening notes to the final explosion, ASH had the entire room smiling, bouncing, singing and generally behaving like we’d all been handed the keys to the same particularly irresponsible time machine.
ASH were fucking AMAZING.
No bullshit. No pretense. Just great songs, ridiculous energy and a room full of people having an absolute banger of a night.
Twenty-seven years after first seeing them, I’m still standing, surrounded by people, losing their shit to the same band.
Some things age fucking beautifully. Some things just never fucking age.
This is the gospel.
I bite crowd surfers
Killer.
