Words by Isaac Vernon
The Wombats are a great live act, first and foremost. Anyone who writes off their songs as pure nostalgia and nothing more needs to go and see them live, headlining an outdoor show like this, and then get back to me. I took my younger brother, who before going in thought he would only know two songs. He found himself shocked at just how many anthems he was singing along to, and how The Wombats have seemingly wormed their fun choruses into his brain over the years without him even realising they are the band responsible!
Opening with ‘Moving to New York’ is already an inspired move. It’s a hit most bands would hold back for an encore, but it immediately got the crowd moving and singing along from the very first line. The energy continued into ‘Techno Fan’, a sleeper hit that kept the momentum going into some newer cuts.
‘Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come’ is one of my favourites from their latest album, ‘Oh! The Ocean’, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to when I first listened to it last year. The song is a great anti-social anthem with some interesting layered vocals and a more chilled-out instrumentation, a seemingly more mature output that moves away from their synth-pop roots. They also played ‘Blood on the Hospital Floor’ from this record, which shows they can still build on their signature sound and write new catchy choruses almost twenty years after their debut.
‘Kill the Director’, and its lyrics, always stood out to me as pure cheese, but in a live set it’s nothing but a highlight, reminding everyone of The Inbetweeners and when we all felt like the world was mint! At this point, I was already thinking the set was full of hits and zero misses, hardly aware that we were only halfway through and there was still more fun to be had. In the run-up to the encore, ‘Lemon to a Knife Fight’ and ‘Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)’ fully encouraged the crowd to dance away and geared them up for “the big ones”.
Onto the encore – much can be said about the TikTokification of music, but I found it encouraging to see a lot of younger faces at this gig, with a portion likely there due to the popularity of ‘Greek Tragedy’ on the platform. It’s great to see that a random snippet from a 12-year-old album can get people discovering a band’s back catalogue and then coming out to support live music as a result. The crowd reaction, singing every word to this song, proved they were pretty much fully fledged fans, and not just there to film the chorus and then go home (although there are always some).
Finally, they closed out with the obvious pick, ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’. I’m almost certain the band are beyond sick of playing this song, as many artists are with their biggest hit twenty years on, but the lads on stage didn’t show it one bit. Even if they were, I’m sure no one was paying attention, as every single person in the crowd was jumping and chanting, basically having one huge party. This song will always be a great closer, and seeing The Wombats at this gig solidified that they’ll always be a fun night out for anyone, whether you’re a superfan or a casual listener. I’m sure my brother wasn’t the only convert in the audience that night.
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