Ash – The Tuning Fork, 14 September 2026: Review & Photo Gallery

15th September 2026

Ash formed in Downpatrick in County Down in 1992 around singer/guitarist Tim Wheeler, bassist Mark Hamilton and drummer Rick McMurray. Their mini-album Trailer arrived in 1994, followed two years later by 1977 an album that sent three ridiculously young musicians into the international rock world and has since been recognised as one of the defining guitar records of its era. Three decades later the original trio are still together while their most recent release 2025’s Ad Astra is remarkably their ninth studio album.

There is something gloriously wrong about going out on a Monday night and being assaulted by a three-piece rock band playing as though it were Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.

On a cold Auckland winter’s evening, Northern Ireland’s Ash transformed the packed Tuning Fork into a hot, sweaty rock ‘n’ roll club, celebrating thirty years of the album that changed everything for them: 1977.

Tonight, though, was about going back to 1996.

But first came Auckland’s Silk Cut.

Auckland’s Silk Cut proved an inspired choice to open the evening. Their melodic, atmospheric sound drew from shoegaze dream pop and psychedelic guitar music with layers of reverb giving the songs a hazy almost cinematic quality. Beneath that spacious surface, however, were strong melodies and an assured rhythm section that kept everything moving.

There was something distinctly British about Silk Cut’s musical character with traces of early-’90s shoegaze and classic guitar pop running through the performance. Rather than overwhelming the songs with noise the band allowed the guitars, harmonies, and atmospheric textures to work around one another. The result was dreamy without becoming shapeless and melodic without sounding overly polished.

Silk Cut carried themselves with the confidence of a band comfortable in their own identity. They weren’t simply filling time before the headliner; their richly textured songs established a suitably nostalgic yet forward-looking atmosphere for Ash and gave the audience a compelling introduction to one of Auckland’s more distinctive guitar bands.

Then Ash walked on and essentially detonated the place.

What struck me immediately was just how huge this band sounds for three people.

This is balls-to-the-wall Rock ‘n’ Roll: guitar, bass and drums played hard and played incredibly well. Yet Ash aren’t some blunt-force rock band. There are pop melodies buried everywhere beneath the distortion, interesting chord changes, dynamics and arrangements that constantly stop the music from becoming predictable.

Tim Wheeler stood centre stage with that wonderful Gibson Flying V, driving it through a big rock guitar rig with a Mesa/Boogie and an array of pedals. He is not only the singer and principal songwriter, he is a seriously good guitar player. And he somehow manages the difficult trick of singing, playing rhythm guitar, covering the lead parts and still making the whole thing look effortless.

When the solos came around he could move away from the microphone and really attack the guitar, occasionally indulging in some classic rock ‘n’ roll showmanship — guitar behind his back, guitar over his head—without any of it feeling like empty posing.

Then there was Mark Hamilton.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a bass player move this much.

Hamilton was almost a second frontman. He bounded around the stage, threw himself into enormous rock poses, pointed the bass like a gun, played it over his head and generally appeared to regard standing still as a criminal offence.

It was theatrical, but bloody cool.

More importantly, underneath all of that activity he is a fantastic bass player. Ash’s rhythm section is the engine room of the band and Hamilton and Rick McMurray were absolutely locked together.

McMurray hammered the kit while also supplying backing vocals and the combination of bass and drums gave Wheeler the freedom to make one guitar sound considerably bigger than one guitar has any right to sound.

For a three-piece, they were enormous.

Ash were performing 1977 from beginning to end in album order, exactly what this 30th anniversary tour promised. The official album sequence runs from Lose Control through Goldfinger, Girl From Mars, I’d Give You Anything and Gone The Dream to Kung Fu, then through Oh Yeah, Let It Flow, Innocent Smile, Angel Interceptor, Lost In You and Darkside Lightside.

And hearing it that way reminded me what an interesting record 1977 actually is.

The obvious comparisons came flying into my head all night: Nirvana in some of the heavier guitar passages; Weezer in the marriage of distortion and massive melodies; flashes of Sabbath in some of the darker, more grinding riffs. There was also something unmistakably British about it, a little of that melodic lineage stretching back through bands such as The Kinks while, strangely enough certain moments even reminded me of the economy and punch of early Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Somewhere else in the mix I could hear the melodic rock instincts that bands such as Goo Goo Dolls would also make their own.

But comparisons only get you so far.

As a line attributed to Jim Morrison puts it comparisons can become “a short cut to thinking.” Ash ultimately sound like Ash.

And that’s the important bit.

Kung Fu tore through the room like some mutant collision between punk, grunge and the Ramones — fast, simple and ridiculously effective. Angel Interceptor was another highlight, its chugging guitars sounding enormous as the crowd sang back at the band.

That audience participation was a major part of the night.

This was a packed Monday night room full of people for whom many of these songs clearly weren’t simply old records. They were attached to memories. Again and again you could hear people around the venue singing every word and sometimes the audience seemed almost as loud as Wheeler.

Then came Girl From Mars.

You only need the opening moments of that song before everybody knows exactly what’s coming. Thirty years after 1977 it remains one of Ash’s signature songs and the reaction at the Tuning Fork was huge.

It simply never fails.

One of the wonderful things about seeing a band with this much history is watching songs written by teenagers come back at them three decades later through the voices of a few hundred people who have carried those songs through their own lives.

And Ash still play them with conviction.

There was no sense whatsoever of three guys begrudgingly recreating an old album because somebody had worked out that there was money in an anniversary tour. Wheeler, Hamilton and McMurray attacked the material.

They gave it everything.

The room became hotter as the night went on until it felt like exactly what a rock venue ought to feel like: loud, sweaty, slightly uncomfortable and absolutely alive.

After reaching the end of the entire 1977 album the band took a short break before returning to remind everyone that their career certainly didn’t end in 1996.

They ripped into another run of fast, energetic rock songs, and one particularly great moment was the appearance of Jack Names The Planets, Ash’s first single.

That song goes right back to February 1994, before 1977. It subsequently appeared in re-recorded form on Trailer and even turned up as a hidden pre-gap track on early CD pressings of 1977.

In other words, the evening hadn’t simply been a celebration of one famous album. By the end it felt like a celebration of the remarkable fact that the same basic three-piece that formed as schoolboys in Downpatrick is still capable of walking onto a stage more than thirty years later and creating this much noise, melody and excitement.

That’s quite something.

Ash have survived changing fashions, record-company upheavals, becoming a four-piece with Charlotte Hatherley and eventually reverting to the original trio. They’ve made nine albums and travelled a long way from three teenagers playing in Northern Ireland.

Yet standing in the Tuning Fork none of that history felt particularly heavy.

They still sound hungry.

They still sound dangerous.

And most importantly they still look as though playing Rock ‘n’ Roll is enormous fun.

Walking out into the cold Auckland night afterwards I realised I’d just had one of the most Rockin’ Monday nights I’ve had in a very long time.