If ‘Girl From Mars’ was their David, ‘Walking Barefoot’ must be considered their Sistine Chapel
In the words of the late great Conor McNicholas, ‘life affirming’.
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and don’t it feel good!
Why can’t we just design, to live like this all the time?
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I love how the first thing you hear on that record is an intake of Tim Wheeler’s breath. Quality tails off a little bit but the first three or four tracks of that album are so good
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Classic and it wasn’t a great idea to release candy as a single in the height of summer and not this.
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Candy was massive though. Got ridiculous airplay in Ireland
Walking Barefoot - brilliant
Candy - utter pish
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Walking Barefoot - seems fine
Candy - best song on the album (an opinion shared by Mark Hamilton)
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Really? I think it didn’t do as well as the other singles in the UK and def lost them some of the rock fans. I think walking barefoot could have been as big as shining light or burn baby burn for them.
wiki says it reached 20 in the UK charts a whole year after the album’s release. from memory i know it was all over daytime Irish radio, as was Sometimes. Walking Barefoot probably would have been too, mind you. But I don’t think mistakes were made
edit - (not a whole year)
Candy did pretty well chart wise and did get a lot of airplay.
Lots of bad songs do though 
The band clearly don’t rate it highly enough for the new best of:
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My one gripe with the song is the line “your company was so relaxing”, which I’ve always found clumsy and quite annoying. Amazing song and album otherwise (apart from Candy, agree with you there). For some reason Submission was always my favourite track, despite being one of the few they didn’t actually release off it.
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haha really? i thought Submission was embarrassing. Wheeler had this weird thing for a while where he got really pissed off about being regarded as a wide-eyed innocent youth and tried to overcompensate. They released a video around that time (Numbskull?) which was pretty much an orgy with Wheeler cutting himself and all kinds of weird shit. Rock and roll, Tim. Probably wouldn’t get away with it today.
Yeah numbskull was some video was apparently some on your New York breakdown where he vanished and holed up in a hotel and made the video or so the story goes. Led to the ‘real drugs, real blood, real sex’ T-shirt slogan.
It’s still on YouTube nsfw
There’s always been a few kinky lyrics in ash songs (reverse cowgirl death defies line in vampire love etc)
Funnily enough it was the drummer who wrote submission.
Yeah, used to skip straight from Burn Baby Burn through to it half of the time. Haven’t listened to Free All Angels for a few years, so it might not have aged as well as I thought it might!
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Cracking song.
Girl From Mars is one of my least favourites though.
It is, and I can’t stress this enough, an absolute belter.
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I was thinking about Ash the other day. For 13 yo me they were really the most exciting thing ever. Kung fu, girl from Mars, angel interceptor. And then 1977 starting with that tie fighter sample and lose control. 'kin hell!
I’ve not experienced that many times since
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I’m probably being a bit harsh on him. He was ahead of his time, predicting the trajectory of Miley Cyrus etc.
and the hidden rewind track(s) before the opening track
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