O2 Academy Liverpool, 18th April 2015
How do you end your guilt-free freedom with a bang before
the perils of the dismal exam season initiate? How else but seeing everyone’s
fourteen-year-old-self’s favourite band, the resilient indie-pop phenomenon
that won’t stop giving The Wombats at their homecoming show.
The trio’s most recent gift to fans is third album Glitterbug, which fuses their recognisable upbeat quirk with a slightly more mature and laid-back style, proving themselves to be just as worth the hype now as they were when the band first received it upon capturing our hearts all those years ago.
A sunny Saturday in Liverpool is the setting for the show, and the queue of eager fans (many having hurried straight from the band’s instore acoustic performance and album signing in the city’s centre) is vast.
The Wombats finally arrive on stage to break into 2013 single Your Body Is a Weapon. The surprisingly vigorous crowd is immediately activated upon first hearing the catchy choruses they have loved since their tweens.
Older tracks Jump Into the Fog, 1996, and the massive Moving to New York go down a treat with the lively spectators. Equally welcomed are newer tracks Greek Tragedy and This Is Not a Party, with many already knowing every punning and narrative lyric. The nostalgia-inducing Techno Fan and Headspace slow the pace only slightly before a launch straight back into The English Summer and the classic party anthems that started it all, including Kill the Director and Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves), interrupted only by a little singalong to the sweetly melodic Little Miss Pipedream.
The end of tonight’s gig is nigh and there is only one song everyone in the room is waiting for; at long last those infamous guitar strums echo around the room and Let’s Dance to Joy Division begins. Whether or not the band do in fact take sentiment in singing the line “I’m back in Liverpool / and everything feels the same” when it is genuinely appropriate, the track certainly reminisces with the audience as such, closing the show on an epic high.
The days of chirpy indie-rock which graced the charts just a few years ago (you know, the days of Klaxons, The Pigeon Detectives, Razorlight, and of course tonight’s hometown heroes) may not be in their high right now, but The Wombats have proved their continued success by fighting through and are just as catchy, as crowd-pleasing, and as simply brilliant as ever.
The trio’s most recent gift to fans is third album Glitterbug, which fuses their recognisable upbeat quirk with a slightly more mature and laid-back style, proving themselves to be just as worth the hype now as they were when the band first received it upon capturing our hearts all those years ago.
A sunny Saturday in Liverpool is the setting for the show, and the queue of eager fans (many having hurried straight from the band’s instore acoustic performance and album signing in the city’s centre) is vast.
The Wombats finally arrive on stage to break into 2013 single Your Body Is a Weapon. The surprisingly vigorous crowd is immediately activated upon first hearing the catchy choruses they have loved since their tweens.
Older tracks Jump Into the Fog, 1996, and the massive Moving to New York go down a treat with the lively spectators. Equally welcomed are newer tracks Greek Tragedy and This Is Not a Party, with many already knowing every punning and narrative lyric. The nostalgia-inducing Techno Fan and Headspace slow the pace only slightly before a launch straight back into The English Summer and the classic party anthems that started it all, including Kill the Director and Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves), interrupted only by a little singalong to the sweetly melodic Little Miss Pipedream.
The end of tonight’s gig is nigh and there is only one song everyone in the room is waiting for; at long last those infamous guitar strums echo around the room and Let’s Dance to Joy Division begins. Whether or not the band do in fact take sentiment in singing the line “I’m back in Liverpool / and everything feels the same” when it is genuinely appropriate, the track certainly reminisces with the audience as such, closing the show on an epic high.
The days of chirpy indie-rock which graced the charts just a few years ago (you know, the days of Klaxons, The Pigeon Detectives, Razorlight, and of course tonight’s hometown heroes) may not be in their high right now, but The Wombats have proved their continued success by fighting through and are just as catchy, as crowd-pleasing, and as simply brilliant as ever.
