Ash: Polaris

In these days of the whoosh-up-and-down firework career, fifth albums are a rare beast. Fifth albums that are actually worth getting excited about are, of course, even rarer. But 'Twilight Of The Innocents' is the record that proves it can be done. It's ambitious, it's energised and it's packed to the rafters with tunes.
Fifteen years after they formed at school in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, Ash have never sounded better. Really, they haven't.
The journey that led to this remarkable album began on July 23rd 2005. That was the day Ash opened for U2 at Rome's 70,000-capacity Olympic Stadium. It was Ash's fifth show with Bono's boys that summer and the very last engagement of the campaign for Meltdown, the hard-rockin' fourth album they'd released 14 tour-filled months earlier. Now, for the first time in a long time, the band's diary was completely blank.
So, what to do next?
"I realised we needed some big changes," says Ash frontman Tim Wheeler. "We needed to shake things up. Not just in the band, but in our lives. In everything." After five Top 10 albums (including their 2002 singles collection), 16 Top 40 singles and countless storming gigs, Northern Ireland's premier power-popsters had reached something of a crossroads. Or, as Wheeler's bass-touting school friend Mark Hamilton puts it, "We needed a kick up the arse".