As thundering as praise may have been for Ms Hatherley over the last half decade (yes, that long, really), you still consider her little more than a dynamic in the scheme of things don’t you. She revitalised Ash, that’s practically undisputed. She brought legitimate harmonies, sass, sharp guitar playing, mini-skirts and a slender, muscular counterbalance to the giddy testosterone running unchecked BC (Before Charlotte). But you still thought she was only riding Tim Wheeler’s coat-tails didn’t you. Which of you can honestly say they were craving a solo album before now, or even for Ash’s songwriting balance to be redressed? Quite. And yes, we know that as a feisty teen spark she was an integral member of London punks Nightnurse – but who, aside from maybe 3 ex-Melody Maker journos probably still holed up in the Good Mixer clutching their P45s, knew anything about them? In that case ‘Summer’ will simply knock you sideways, ‘Stop’ backwards and ‘Why You Wanna?’ will have you chasing the little fuzzy stars around your ringing bonce.
This is one hell of an album, full of dazzling pop, perforated edges, the cold shoulder and warm embraces. Nothing here seems obvious and this is where she proves her singular worth. You can see what she’s taken from Ash – ‘Paragon’ and ‘Where I’m Calling From’ pull from the ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and ‘Oh Yeah’ ends of their canon respectively – but these are songs that would almost prove ill-fitting, maybe even just too complex, for Wheeler’s fluffy grip. Formula is half the key to any shade of successful pop, don’t get us wrong, but there’s a Graham Coxon-esque playfulness on here, like a wonky-haired kid running erratically through a field of corn, flattening winding trails, certain they’ll find a new world when they hit daylight again.
See the way ‘Paragon’ races, guitars criss-crossing and how ‘Stop’ descends into thrilling, undisciplined feedback. Her vocals are cold, functional and cutting, yet strangely not at all repellent. Something you learn to love. They’re like Miki Berenyi of Lush, Nina Persson of The Cardigans and Lauren Laverne with their tonsils in a beautiful cherry-stalk twist. Much on here is actually what Kenickie’s second album probably should have sounded like, if they were trying to prove they’d matured at all, especially ‘Bastardo’, a rollicking cautionary tale of a brief fling with a Spanish lad called Antonio who’d pissed off back to Mexico with her “beautiful guitar” by the time she woke up the next morning, “the two-faced lothario”. There is not a single tune on here that could not out-fox (in both senses of the word) anything on Ash’s ‘Meltdown’. Let’s hope for the boys’ sake that Ash wasn’t just a means to an end for her. She’s found an alternate ending and we’re sat here watching it on repeat.