Live at The Tuning Fork
14 September 2026
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
ASH — 1977, 30 Years On: Still Burning Baby Burn.
There are nights when Auckland feels like it has been deliberately designed to discourage you from going to a gig.
Tonight is one of them.
The temperature has been steadily dropping throughout the day, and as I walk from the car towards The Tuning Fork, the fresh night air has that unmistakable Auckland winter bite. But this is merely the calm before the storm. Because once inside, the temperature is about to rise considerably.
I’m here to see Ash.
Not just any Ash show, either. The Northern Irish power-pop veterans are celebrating 30 years of their debut album, 1977, which, before anyone reaches for their calculator, was actually released in 1996. The title refers to the year the band members were born and, rather more importantly, the year Star Wars first hit cinemas. The album would go on to sell more than two million copies worldwide and establish Ash as one of the great melodic noise machines of the Britpop era.
Thirty years later, they are back in Auckland to play the whole thing.
But first, there is another band to deal with.
Silk Cut may have been chosen as tonight’s support because their name happens to fit rather nicely alongside Ash, but if that was the thinking, it turns out to be a happy accident because this Auckland four-piece are more than capable of standing on their own.
They enter the stage to a subterranean sub-bass rumble, followed by a Beatles track as they make their entrance stage right.
Well, that's one way of announcing your influences.
And really, you can't go wrong with The Beatles.
There is something immediately striking about Silk Cut. They have an image. Not an over-engineered, focus-grouped image, but a genuine sense of identity, something increasingly rare in New Zealand bands. They stride confidently onto the stage, plug in and get on with it.
No fuss.
No endless “How are you Auckland?” introductions.
Just play.
Led by Andrew Thorne, Silk Cut have been building an increasingly interesting body of work around British pop, psychedelia, shoegaze and their affection for the television and music culture of the 1960s and ’70s. Their catalogue now stretches across several releases, including Our Place in the Stars, Silk Cut and 2025's Corridors of Light.
Live, however, the songs reveal something more immediate.
One track in particular grabs me with the hook:
“Ten feet tall and made of steel.”
It's rhythmically solid, melodic and instantly accessible, with one of those choruses that burrows into your head whether you invited it in or not.
And that's the thing with Silk Cut.
They have songs.
Not just sounds. Not just atmosphere. Actual songs.
The band also benefit from dual vocalists, with Thorne and Justin McLean combining to create some very effective harmonies.
Then comes one of the evening's best throwaway moments.
Thorne addresses the audience:
“Thank you very much for your kind consideration. Please follow us on MySpace.”
It takes a second.
Then the penny drops.
It's delivered with precisely the right amount of deadpan humour to an audience who, for the most part, absolutely understand the joke.
And then, just to hammer home their affection for a particular era of British culture, Silk Cut close with the theme from the UK's 1977 action series The Professionals, reproducing that instantly recognisable opening guitar riff.
Nothing like a little nostalgia to drag an audience into your world.
Silk Cut leave the stage having done exactly what a support act should do: they've entertained, they've made an impression and they've left me wanting to hear more.
Keep an eye on them.
Before Ash even appear, the Tuning Fork is already beginning to feel like a pressure cooker.
The PA is pumping The Smiths' “How Soon Is Now?”, which feels like a particularly appropriate choice given the musical territory Ash have travelled into and around over the decades.
Then the lights go down.
The crowd erupts.
And then...
Nothing.
Ash aren't on stage.
Instead, the PA continues for another couple of songs, with LCD Soundsystem's “Dance Yrself Clean” and Fontaines D.C.'s “Bug” helping to keep the audience warm.
It's actually a rather brilliant little tease.
And then the real noise begins.
Ash hit the stage with the kind of force you'd expect from a band that has spent three decades learning precisely how to turn three people into a much bigger noise.
Mark Hamilton immediately catches my eye.
The man has some of the greatest rock'n'roll bass poses I've seen in years.
For a photographer, he's a gift.
Hamilton twists, contorts, leans, lunges and works the entire width of the stage while continuing to play as though he's standing in his living room. He continually locks into visual exchanges with drummer Rick McMurray, creating the kind of physical rhythm that you don't get from simply standing still.
And then there is Tim Wheeler.
Ash have never been a band built around technical perfection for its own sake. Their superpower has always been immediacy, guitars, melody, attitude, hooks and an almost reckless enthusiasm for getting the song out there.
Tonight that formula is still working.
But there are moments when Wheeler struggles with some of the higher vocal passages.
Whether that's the accumulated punishment of touring, jet lag, sleep deprivation, interviews, travel or simply the realities of singing songs written when you were nineteen, there are moments where the voice doesn't quite have the same altitude as the original recordings.
“Lost in You” is the most obvious example, particularly when the key change arrives.
It's a demanding song.
But here's the important thing.
The audience doesn't care.
Because this isn't a karaoke recreation of 1996.
It's Ash in 2026.
And these songs belong to the people in the room now as much as they did to the teenagers who first bought 1977 thirty years ago.
For me, there is an added layer of nostalgia.
Thirty years ago, on 11 October 1996, I was standing at the North Shore Events Centre watching Ash support Garbage.
I was there.
Three decades later, I'm standing in another Auckland venue watching the same band perform the same record.
Only now we're all considerably older.
Some things change.
Some things don't.
And 1977 still sounds remarkably alive.
The album is performed in its entirety, delivering that perfect collision of punk energy, pop melody, adolescent hormones, guitars and gigantic choruses that made Ash such an important part of the mid-'90s alternative landscape.
“Lose Control.”
“Goldfinger.”
“Girl From Mars.”
“Kung Fu.”
“Oh Yeah.”
“Angel Interceptor.”
These aren't simply songs tonight.
They're time machines.
Every chorus seems to open another door into another version of someone's life.
And inside The Tuning Fork, those memories are colliding with the present.
The room is absolutely raging.
It's also ridiculously hot.
With hundreds of moving bodies packed into the venue, the air conditioning is fighting a battle it simply cannot win.
Sweat becomes part of the evening.
The Tuning Fork has effectively become a sauna with guitars.
Ash eventually reach the end of 1977 and disappear from the stage.
The audience immediately begins demanding more.
Clapping.
Shouting.
Then Ash return.
And suddenly we're moving beyond 1996.
The band dip into their later catalogue, including material from their latest album Ad Astra, their ninth studio album released in 2025.
“Fun People” gets an airing, as does the title track “Ad Astra”.
It's a reminder that after thirty years, Ash aren't simply touring the past.
They're still a working, evolving band.
Then, with three songs remaining, the audience decides it knows better than the setlist.
Requests fly from every direction.
Too many to count.
Wheeler listens.
And then gives in.
“Okay,” comes the response in effect, and suddenly the band are adding their first-ever single to the set.
“Jack Names the Planets.”
It's a fantastic version.
And it's exactly the kind of moment that makes a live show different from an album.
The setlist is no longer fixed.
The audience has become part of it.
And then there is one final song.
“Burn Baby Burn.”
If there was any remaining oxygen in The Tuning Fork, it doesn't survive.
The place goes completely mental.
The temperature rises another five degrees.
Bodies are moving everywhere.
Hamilton is throwing himself around the stage.
McMurray is pounding the kit.
Wheeler is driving the guitars forward.
And the audience is giving back everything they've got.
It's the perfect way to end the night.
Not reflective.
Not sentimental.
Not gently nostalgic.
Just loud, sweaty, euphoric rock'n'roll.
Exactly as it should be.
As the lights come up, reality returns.
People begin filing out of The Tuning Fork.
Some look battle weary.
Some look like they need a shower.
Some look like they're ready for bed.
And given it's Monday night, I suspect there are more than a few people quietly calculating how much sleep they're going to get before work.
But they look happy.
Really happy.
Because for a couple of hours tonight, nobody was worrying about tomorrow.
They were back in 1996.
Or 1977.
Or perhaps simply wherever they were the first time they heard Girl From Mars, Goldfinger, Kung Fu or Burn Baby Burn.
After the show I get the chance to catch up with Rick McMurray, whom I interviewed a few weeks earlier from his home in Edinburgh.
Tonight I get a little more insight into just how punishing the current schedule actually is.
Ash arrived in New Zealand only the day before the Auckland show.
After Wellington, they're off to Japan.
Then Singapore.
Then Hong Kong.
Then back to the UK.
Then Europe.
And the cycle continues.
The current run stretches all the way through to 17 December, when Ash are scheduled to finish this leg of the tour at London's legendary Roundhouse.
That's a hell of a schedule for any band.
Never mind one that has been doing this for three decades.
But perhaps that's the secret.
Ash have never really behaved like a band that was supposed to grow old gracefully.
They were never particularly interested in standing still.
1977 may be thirty years old, but tonight it doesn't feel like a museum piece.
It feels alive.
And that might be Ash's greatest achievement.
Thirty years after three teenagers made an album about youth, frustration, desire, noise and escape, those same songs are still capable of filling a room with sweaty, beer-soaked, Monday-night chaos.
The faces have changed.
The hairlines have changed.
The venues have changed.
The world has changed.
But the songs remain.
And when that final guitar chord of “Burn Baby Burn” disappears into the hot air of The Tuning Fork, one thing becomes abundantly clear:
Ash aren't simply celebrating 30 years of 1977.
They're proving they survived them.
And they're still burning.
Burn, baby, burn.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
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