Ash close the circle on Bittersweet Blue at last

The 7-inch and video are out; the expanded 1977 package lands on 16 October, with UK and Ireland dates still ahead this winter.

Ash have released the long-lost track Bittersweet Blue as a 7-inch single with a new music video, locking it into the 30th-anniversary edition of their debut album 1977, due on 16 October 2026 via BMG.

The song was written before the Rockfield sessions that shaped the original record. The band played it live while supporting Therapy? in December 1995, then recorded it in early 1996, only to leave it off the finished album. It resurfaced during catalogue digitisation work and was completed three decades later by Tim Wheeler. Drummer Rick McMurray has described the result as “30 years in the making”.

What the reissue actually holds

The anniversary set keeps the 1996 album intact and builds around it. On 2CD and digital, the extras are four bonus tracks — Bittersweet Blue, Oh Yeah (2026 Version), Girl From Mars (Demo 2026 Mix) and Gone The Dream (Acoustic 2026 Mix) — plus a second disc of live recordings from 2021. The 2LP places B-sides on its second disc. Physical editions arrive as EcoRecord green and black InkPlosion vinyl in a gatefold sleeve, and as a 2CD digisleeve with booklet; a digital version completes the range.

That packaging choice matters for a record whose original singles and B-sides still circulate among listeners who first caught the band in the mid-1990s. Completing Bittersweet Blue and pairing it with fresh mixes and an acoustic cut gives the reissue a clear centre rather than a simple remaster.

Downpatrick beginnings and the weight of 1977

Ash formed in Downpatrick, County Down, in 1992 as a three-piece: vocalist and guitarist Tim Wheeler, bassist Mark Hamilton and drummer Rick McMurray. Their mini-album Trailer appeared in 1994. The full-length 1977 followed in 1996 and became the record that fixed their name, later placed among the 500 greatest albums of all time. After that breakthrough, the line-up expanded with Charlotte Hatherley on guitar and vocals for Nu-Clear Sounds in 1998. Free All Angels arrived in 2001 with a run of successful singles.

The band have kept working. Race the Night came out in 2023, followed by Ad Astra in 2025, alongside later singles. The 30th-anniversary treatment of 1977 therefore sits inside an active catalogue rather than at the end of one. Returning to a track written and half-finished before the Rockfield tapes were even rolled gives the reissue a direct line back to the three-piece era that first defined them.

Leaving Bittersweet Blue off the original running order was a decision of the moment; finishing it now closes a small gap in that early body of work without rewriting the album listeners already know.

Dates still to come

The anniversary edition itself is set for 16 October. The band’s supporting world tour continues with UK and Ireland dates through November and December. Further detail on individual venues remains to be confirmed in full, but the winter run keeps the focus on the record that first carried Ash beyond Northern Ireland.

For an audience that still plays the original singles and the B-sides that surrounded them, the 7-inch and the expanded set offer a finished version of a song that had lived only in setlists and memory. The rest of the package — the 2026 mixes, the acoustic take, the 2021 live disc — frames that recovery inside the longer arc from Trailer to the present.