lance saint ash

"Three albums over 26 years. One might think of the infamous obsessive perfectionism of Prince. One might also think of break-throughs that were decades in the making – Ed Sheeran’s little-known first album, Toad the Wet Sprocket’s under-polished first album, Snow Patrol’s early efforts. In the case of Ash, it was the result of having completely walked away from the music industry to build a more personally satisfying life, and then returning to it when his life afforded time, focus, and funds to do so – which left a gap of recorded creativity of twenty-four years.

To understand the Ash’s library to-date, one must understand that he was enamored early in his development with the likes of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love and Peter Gabriel’s So albums – two artists famously inventive in the studio and of whom it might be said are more “artists” than musicians. Ash is on record saying that it never interested him to play live, and after being given opportunities to do, he never took to it and stopped accepting and pursuing opportunities to do so. Ash’s passion was and is to create within the careful control of a studio – not on the ever-dynamic stage. Producing; not performing.

Ash has given us three albums, self-produced, and none of them sound like each other. Ash’s sophomore album, two Rooms, feels the most cohesive from start to finish, which one might wish were true of his eponymous debut and his third album Songs from a Songwriter. Ash’s first album has a polished college-radio feel, just shy of a well-groomed pop/rock male solo record of the same era (e.g. Don Henley’s End of the Innocence), while Songs from a Songwriter moves from a sparse acoustic guitar and intimate vocal opener through varying degrees of restraint in producing some profoundly confessional songs on towards a California-coast feel cover of Billy Joel’s Summer, Highland Falls and ends with a gut-wrenching, seven-minutes-and-four-seconds masterpiece that likely fits better on a dramatic theatrical musical stage than it does on a singer/songwriter album – until you learn that Ash was heavily influenced for this song by the entirety of Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 album Bookends and you begin to realize that the Ash sees production as serving the song and not the other way around. In an age where “producers” create “beats” and study which chord progressions create “ear worms” and dopamine hits, Ash is old-school…

… it starts with the words. The music that turns words into a song supports the words. The vocal delivery serves the words. The instrumentation is NOT about “a guitar part” or a groove – it is about creating an audio texture that establishes a mood that serves the words.

And so, the quandary of “will the real Saint Ash please stand up, please stand up” that record labels and radio stations and audiences alike have had makes sense. From our very first introduction to him (“president” - the first song on his first album), you might conclude he’s a male Sheryl Crow with sociopolitical things to say, but two songs later on the same album, you hear Peter Gabriel-ish world-beat vibes; and then three songs later, Ash hearkens grungier jars of clay on “graceless” and by the end, you’re listening to metered poetry, an upright bass, and an unapologetic jazz organ played without the stereotypic fluidity we’re used to hearing from that instrument which effectively accentuates… the words Ash has penned. And that’s just the first album.

To understand Ash, you must see each track on each album as a stand-alone work of art and not expect the whole of the album itself to be a statement. It’s as if each album is a mix-tape of his own material. And it’s not only the production on each track that varies; the lack of repeated subject, lyric, or melodic “tells” is remarkable. Taylor Swift has her themes, the genres of modern country and blues have their familiar progressions, producers have their signature sounds (“oh, that’s a Dre beat”); Good luck pinning anything on Ash.

Other, perhaps, than his voice. Having publicly cited Morten Harket (lead singer for the Norwegian band a-ha), Peter Gabriel (former Genesis front-man and solo artist), and Toad the Wet Sprocket’s front-man and solo troubadour Glen Phillips as his vocal inspirations, it’s surprising that one can’t really hear any of them in his voice. Ash’s tone isn’t pure enough and is too forceful to sound like Harket, it is too full-bodied to sound like Gabriel, and it is too histrionic to match the beautiful everyman vocals of Phillips. That said, it is a more than capable voice. It is just – unique; but not in an irritating way. Across the three albums, Ash’s range is on full display. Ash’s voice can be intimately close or bombastically anthematic – and it is always powerful and it is always textured.

It is hard to know if his melodies happen because he knows what he is capable of executing when he sings, or if his singing ultimately re-writes melodies at the point of recording once the energy and skill-set are engaged, but there are quick pop-outs to falsetto (think John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting) and immediate shifts between power and soft between neighboring notes that make one listen again to see if you can hear an edit in the vocal line, but Ash can do the same thing live - so, no, it’s real.

And, once again, the words are served by Ash’s voice. Each word is carefully sung. Here is a particular instance: in the song “brightest colours”, Ash delivers the line, “the canvas that we live on has been cut to fit our frame” with a notable abruptness to the word “cut” – no added effects, no disruption to the melodic flow of the line – just an articulation that draws attention to the word.

If consideration of Ash as an artist continually returns to his words, then what words he puts into the mise en scene of our lives warrants examination. While other lyricists write for the gestalt, whether through imaginative empathy or through a generalization of uniquely personal events, Ash writes from the unique vantage-point of his on-going (and seemingly never-ending) self-examination towards personal growth. He seems to discover some aspect of himself, broad or narrow, that is not Ideal - and then examines it: those who have wrestled on the same point, or a particularly similar point, will likely find catharsis and relief that they are not alone in their struggle; but those who haven’t will likely wonder what all the angst is about - to the degree that a whole artistic effort would be put into voicing it - and either hit the “skip song” button or conclude that Ash is not an artist they’re interested in.

Which would be a mistake. There are thirty (30) Ash songs now public, delivered over 30 years, that are painstakingly crafted by an insightful, articulate, and careful artist into thirty unique vessels of thought and style. A majority of people will find, within those thirty tracks, several combinations of lyrical content and stylistic approach resonating with them, thus tempting them to be Only Fans of Those Songs - but Ash, the artist, based on his entire catalogue, warrants our attention

Ash’s music is not the sonic wall-paper of so many artists who sound the same, both in comparison to their own work and to other artists. Ash’s music is not music you put on for a “vibe” or in the background; it demands your focus - and in exchange, offers you, the listener, something substantive to think about. And you will no doubt find a melodic, musical, or sonic hooked lodged in you after you listen to any Ash song.

Factoring Ash’s songwriting and lyrics, his strong, cultivated singing voice, and the impressively varied musical and production efforts (though not as pioneering as his idols Bush and Gabriel…) in his catalogue so far, Ash does not arrive at 5 Stars for this review of his work thus far. But the 4 awarded are earned and enthusiastically given."

- Stone Branaugh