(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ash Nu-Clear Sounds (DreamWorks Records)

Halfway through the '90s, a bunch of kids came screaming out of the U.K. Two fantastic bands made up mostly of teenagers--Ash (from Downpatrick, Northern Ireland) and Supergrass (from Oxford, England)--gave the shriveled husk of pop an 11th-hour injection of fun. Even so, their music had little in common with Hanson's Yankee bubble-gum. Ash's first album, dubbed 1977 in deference to the hallowed arrival of Star Wars, took the cherry-syrup melodies and summer-lovin' couplets of adolescent pop and dunked them in a tart coating of punkish clangor. Huge hits in Britain, sugar rushes like "Oh Yeah" and "Girl from Mars" felt like the Beach Boys howling to be heard over a junkyard combine.

For anyone who considers 1977 one of the unsung treasures of the decade, Nu-Clear Sounds will come as a crushing disappointment. In a textbook sophomore slump, the dizzy vitality of 1977 has been leached away, replaced by a batch of exhausted laments about exhaustion. (Telltale titles: "Burn Out" and "Low Ebb.") "I'm bored with the century," Tim Wheeler moans, "and I'm sick of it all." It was bound to happen: Ash grew up. What a bummer.

--Jeff Gordinier