Ash - NME/Radio 1 stage

There is an undeniable Gaelic charm when the Irish band Ash takes to the stage. Tim Wheeler has a laid-back charm about him that adds to the summer feel of the songs that they were performing. Opening with ‘Lose Control’, the band immediately struck up a chord in the audience, and were set to deliver some fan-favourites – which isn’t difficult when every track they played fitted the criteria.

After the first rousing pop-punk anthem came another one in the form of ‘Burn Baby Burn’, welcomed by the onlookers with a harmony that only a mass of people can secure as sounding high-quality, and where one person would simply sound miserable. There was nothing miserable about the set that Ash were playing; they had the foresight to include an assortment of tracks from their vast back-catalogue, to the applause of the audience, as it was precisely what they wanted.

A lot of festival-goers were surprised by the pseudo-heat-wave that assaulted the back of necks at the beginning of the event, and Ash suddenly seemed like the perfect choice to headline the NME/Radio 1 tent on a Friday evening, bashing out classic tracks that simply could not fail to maintain a healthy summer feel, and bring smiles of sheer enjoyment to every face in the vast crowd.

Once the performance was over, there was logically a request for an encore – and they delivered. Leaping back onto the stage they burst out the Buzzcocks-esque guitar basher ‘Jack Names the Planets’, to elation from diehard fans in the audience, and the appreciation of casual listeners. Ash were an all-encompassing act, and an exchangeable energy went throughout the audience, causing riotous bopping up and down, and choruses of voices over the chorus sung by one. Ash were never the dully floating, gray result of a failing fire, but are the fuel that inspires it to grow.

James Wright