Ash frontman Tim Wheeler is in reflective but upbeat mood as he talks about the band’s new album To The Stars, their first since 2021. “It’s the shortest gap we’ve had since our first and second albums,” he says. “That was like a two-year gap between 1977 and Nu-Clear Sounds. We never managed it again until now, so this is really good going.”
The album, due in October, came together quickly thanks to a backlog of ideas and unfinished tracks. “There were a few songs kicking around from the last record that I hadn’t finished, and I knew they were going to be good,” Wheeler explains. “I also had lots of little ideas, and even a couple of covers I’d been wanting to do for a while. It all just kind of fell together.”
Sci-fi themes thread through parts of the record, a nod to Ash’s long-standing fascination with the cosmic. “We’ve always had a bit of a sci-fi fascination,” Wheeler says. “The record’s not a total concept album, but there are moments where it takes off. I like how it’s called To The Stars Ad Astra — you can still be on Earth looking at the stars. It’s about aiming high, the struggle of existing in life these days, and dreaming of escape.”
Wheeler is candid about how the songs actually arrive. “I kind of, I sort of learned how to do it eventually, you know, you just sit down and just write something,” he says, describing a shift from waiting for inspiration to a more disciplined approach. “I used to always just try to remember it when that moved on to like trying to record them. Now I try to get like, I always try to write a verse, you know, verse chorus, get my melodies, and then if I can get some lyrics at the same time, and that’s like, that’s a really good thing. Because coming back to like, finished lyrics, there’s always like, you have to try to get your head back in space.”
He has learned to remove the pressure of perfection. “You don’t have to fully commit to it. So take some pressure off, just write something and just finish it to a certain point if you can. And then then I’ll like, you can always like, rewrite chorus, rewrite verse, change lyrics, you know, take a bit of pressure off or something, don’t make it perfect. Just just finish something.” When progress stalls he’s pragmatic: “put a placeholder in there of some kind and then just step away and then a couple weeks later you come back to listen to things and then you sometimes really get a pleasant surprise.”
Being in a band remains central to how those ideas are tested. “It’s great being in a band as well because I could send the guys stuff and I get really good feedback,” Wheeler says. “I’ll send ideas to Mark and Rick, and they’re honest — not just ‘Yeah, great’ but ‘That could be better.’ That pushes me to improve. And when we play something together, sometimes it just comes alive instantly, even better than expected. Other times it’s a real struggle, and you’re like, ‘Why is this not working?’ Then you have to work to get it to what your original feeling was.”
Wheeler believes the most powerful songs come from life itself. “The best stuff, as always, ends up being like a bit of whatever is going on in your subconscious and the stuff in your life, you know, the feelings of that is very cathartic to write about that. And sometimes the most potent songs have come from something you’re feeling, whether it’s being in love to being heartbroken or like sad about something in your life.” Give Me Back My World, written at the very start of the pandemic, came out of precisely that pressure: “I wrote it right at the start, when everything was so uncertain… I was separated from my girlfriend and ended up stuck in Ireland for four months. We lost a huge amount of money, went into debt — it was grim… That song poured out in one go — the lyrics hardly needed changing. It was just me writing exactly what I was experiencing.”
Musically, To The Stars shows Ash’s range while keeping a playful core. “There’s a kind of playfulness through all of it,” Wheeler says. “We are a rock band, kind of indie rock at the core, but there are a lot of different avenues to explore within that world. Which One Do You Want? is quite Johnny Marr on the guitars, the bass line’s a bit Andy Rourke, so it’s quite far from where we started, but it still feels modern. Then you’ve got Fun People, which is completely cracked in a brilliant way, and Give Me Back My World, which is more of a classic Ash single.”
Blur guitarist Graham Coxon guests on two tracks, adding an unpredictable edge. “I thought Fun People would be really cool for him, because it’s unhinged, and I wanted someone’s unhinged guitar on it. Then on Ad Astra, we did a kind of call-and-answer vocal and a guitar battle. He’s so inventive, and no one else plays quite like that. We actually did it all in one afternoon — it was a pleasure.”
That playfulness translates to the stage. “I think it will be great to play live,” Wheeler says. “Being a three-piece, there are always certain layers you have to leave out, but once it’s loud enough — with the drums, bass, my voice and the guitar solos turned up — you’ve got the key elements. People don’t mind if it’s not exactly the same as the record. In fact, they prefer something more spontaneous, something different.”
This summer Ash returned to Glastonbury for the first time in 15 years. “The weather was really good and we had a really good audience, a really good big crowd, so it felt good to be back. It’s a festival that brings your A-game out — you really want to do an awesome show there.” The band have also shared bills with Manic Street Preachers, The Darkness and Richard Ashcroft — shows Wheeler describes as reminders that the music still matters: “There was a real integrity to that line-up… The Darkness — they take a very different approach to rock but it somehow really works together. They’re amazing musicians.”
Looking ahead, the tour is big on paper but carefully paced. “It looks like a massive tour, but it’s spread out over six months. About two weeks on, then a break, then back out again. It’s quite evenly paced.” Rehearsals are brief and focused — “We’ll rehearse the new songs for a couple of days to lock them in” — and the band will add songs to the set gradually to see what connects.
For Wheeler, the bottom line has always been simple. “If it wasn’t fun and playful, we’d have quit long ago. Just repeating the old stuff would be boring.” With To The Stars, Ash have managed a record that aims high while keeping that playfulness intact — and that, for Wheeler, is everything.
Ad Astra is out on October 3rd. Catch the band on tour this Winter
