Although not as sublime as fellow Bauhaus compadre Peter Murphy's recent "Unshattered" album, DANIEL ASH'S first full-length ive abum "Come Alive" nonetheless acts as a stinging sonic document and a handy live 'greatest hits' compendium rolled into one.
Featuring 15 tracks from an ectstatic club and small hall tour, "Come Alive" culls tunes from Ash's stints with Bauhaus, the equally groundbreaking Tones On Tail and his successful tenure with fellow Bauhaus men David J and Kevin Haskins in Love And Rockets: a band who captivated the States in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In addition, the album features a pretty fair smattering of Ash's solo work and opens with a quartet of tracks originally recorded in his own name. All of these are searingly effective, with a special mention due to both "Walk On The Moon" and "Come Alive" itself. The former has lots of reverb, drama and voodoo, while "Come Alive", meanwhile, showcases beefed up, diseased Glam riffing, instantly recognisable as coming from the same fretboard as the one that came up with the chilling power behind tracks like "Dark Entries" and "Terror Couple Kill Colonel."
All of these, along with louche, swaggering anthems like "So Alive" prove conclusively that Daniel Ash can rock with the best of them should he so choose, but often it's when he succumbs to the lure of the experimental that he presents us with the album's best moments. For example, check out "Sweet FA" from the Love & Rockets songbook - which is drenched in Hollywood, Lou Reed-ish "doo doo doos" and finds Ash sneaking "fuck all" into the lyrics in his rounded, Cockney vocal - or the evocative "Christian Says" where the guitars have a distinctly Middle Eastern wail.
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The one concession to Ash's Bauhaus past comes with a still potent "Slice Of Life" (originally from the band's swansong "Burning From The Inside" album), but Ash's own "Ghost Writer" sounds like a sister piece from the same era, as its' spooked and taut vibe pulls along a dubby undertow akin to "She's In Parties" and sounds like reggae beamed in from the most distant of stars.
Inevitably, Ash hangs onto the crowd pleasers until the home strait and goes for the chequered flag via a killer twosome from Tones On Tail days in "OK, This Is The Pops" and "Go." The former is a manic, drum-heavy affair snagging on sheets of barbed guitar funk that sounds supremely contemporary right now, while "Go" - the mid-80s club smash that would go on to help launch Moby's career - is a frantic meltdown and a thermo-nuclear curtain closer.
OK, so in the minus corner the sound is sometimes a little rough and smudged, while the adherence to a riffsmart set of songs sometimes glosses over the fact Daniel Ash remains one of the most unusual guitarists to have ripped up the rock rule book, but these are relatively minor gripes during a largely exciting and gregarious hour or so's enjoyment. Or, as the mand himself says at the close: "Fuckin'...the best gig of the tour so far. Thank you, we had fun and we'll see you all the bar."
Reckon so, Dan. Mine's a large one, thanks very much.
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