Ash Shows Signs It Has Room to Grow

If you’re in search of the pure teen-pop experience but feel that the touted Silverchair is a bit, well, old-sounding, you might give Ash a shot. Two of the trio’s members are pushing 20 and the drummer has passed it, but the music on the Northern Ireland group’s new album, “1977,” chronicles the vibrancy of adolescence with invigorating authenticity and urgency.

That’s helped make Ash, which headlined the packed Roxy on Tuesday, a British chart sensation, and its prospects aren’t bad in a U.S. that’s taken a shine to Oasis--a band that could be its musical big brother.

As with Oasis, a whole history of British pop--punk, glitter, metal, Beatles, Cure, et al--courses through the music’s bloodstream, and on the softer tunes singer-guitarist Tim Wheeler catches a rough-edged, authentic vulnerability reminiscent of Noel Gallagher’s.

At this point, though, Ash is more dynamic in the studio, where its concise songs--alternately dreamy and bratty, silly and sensitive--benefit from a range of sonic flavoring, than onstage. At the Roxy, Wheeler, bassist Mark Hamilton and drummer Rick McMurray didn’t assert strong personalities, and their pop epiphanies were separated by stretches of faceless riffing.