CHARLOTTE HATHERLEY "Behave EP"

UPDATE: Hey, sorry, tried to post this, hours ago, but for some reason my Fetch wasn't working. Don't be surprised if there's a new post very shortly after this...

I discovered Ash very shortly after their first single or two dropped. A friend from Minneapolis raved about the teenaged Northern Ireland punky trio and I bought in. "Kung Fu" was incredible and I was looking for a way out of a fey pop tent I'd constructed for myself. I needed some rock and Ash was just what the doctor ordered. They had some missteps (2000's Nu-Clear Sounds comes to mind though if I re-immersed myself in it I'd likely come to love it), for the most part though, I followed their career from the early 90's gritty punk darlings to the power pop heroes to.....what? (insert sound of needle scratching off the side of a record here)

Wait, what's this, you're adding a girl to the band? Was this the record company's idea? Are one of you sleeping with her? Yoko? What? Well, I was surprised they'd enlisted Charlotte Heatherley on second guitar and vocals sometime around 1998, but when Free All Angels came out, I was fully comfortable and impressed with the new addition. I remember that summer, that record, was so absolutely perfect, mostly because it felt like such a summer record. "Sometimes" and "Shining Light" killed me dead in my tracks.

Ash released a pretty hardcore heavy metal pop record in 2004 with "Meltdown" and it struggled to find an audience over here. Charlotte surprised me again by jettisoning the band, amicably it should be noted. She promptly released a very solid solo record "Grey Will Fade". "Bastardo" wore on me after a while, but "Kim Wilde", "Summer", and "Paragon" were true examples of jagged little power pop, think if Juliana Hatfield had any confidence and a distortion pedal.

Charlotte's about to launch another album and here's the first single. It's a hip grinder, it didn't hit me the first listen, but now it's hitting me pretty hard. There's nothing out there like it and that's probably the best thing anyone can say about it. It's not going to make you dance, but it revs you up to hear more.... stay tuned.

BEHAVE
KIM WILDE (from Grey Will Fade)