The Wombats

The Copper Rooms, Warwick Arts Centre
2012-02-21

A review by: Ryan Cornall
Photography by: Glenn Rossington

Armed with their very own bracelet the student union was packed with energetic teens ready to witness The Wombats synth filled indie pop. First they had too go through the support, The Static Jacks and Hooray For Earth. The Static Jacks were up. At first, the sound engineers didn’t do them justice, as for the first 2 songs people in the first couple of rows were seen covering there ears. Towards the end of the set however they seemed to be quite comfortable onstage, the singer was energetic and a charismatic frontman who used the very limited space really well. As far as support bands go they got the crowd clapping along and did what every good support should do, leave the crowd hyped up and ready for the main act.

Hooray For Earth however didn’t have the same effect. The guitarist walked onstage in Timberland boots a Hippie t-shirt and a Jacket that looked even worse for wear than he did, as his eyeballs were as red as rudolph’s nose. When they started to play, it went even further down the never ending hill, in their opening song the singer wailed for a minute and wherever they could have filled a gap with guitar they crammed it full with synth, at which point i just couldnt keep up. The Guy could sing and well in fact but he didn’t seem to be bothered they failed at winning the crowd over and even it seemed at keeping themselves interested. They have a very distinctive sound that they could do something great with, but in the grand old scheme of things tonight was not their greatest effort.

You could now feel the tension in the room everybody already very hot and sweaty willing The Wombats onto stage. They came onstage too the relentless serenade of a hundred screaming girls and many spotty teenage boys with voices going from a Kurt Cobain mumble to a Justin Bieber squeal, they started with the first song of the new album ‘Our Perfect Disease’ shortly followed by ‘Kill The Director’. Some may think that they rely heavily on old favourites such as KTD and ‘Lets Dance To Joy Division’ but after songs like ‘Techno Fan’ and ‘Girls/Fast Cars’ getting such a great reception from the crowd you should put those thoughts down to a serious case of bad judgement as they are definitely some of there greatest weapons in terms of crowd pleasing.

If anything ‘My First Wedding’ and ‘Dr. Suzanne’ where well received but not half as well as the newer songs proving there fan base is forever expanding and putting all doubts that The Wombats are past there peak, to bed forevermore. Some may be made to believe that as there’s only 3 of them and there constantly either playing guitar, singing or playing synth they don’t have time to show any energy or get the crowd going but there must be something in the water on The Wombat’s tour bus as they manage just as well as any other band at getting the crowd leaping and screaming there hearts out, if anything it makes the crowd even more excited when they get a chance to come off there guitar or even just walk out into the middle during a solo. They had the crowd eating out of there hands in every aspect.

After playing there usual crowd pleasers such as ‘Lost In The Post’ and ‘Moving To New York’ they announced that ‘Tokyo’ would in fact be their last song. As soon as it was over there was a mix between people screaming the lyrics to ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’ and ‘Anti-D’ and within a minute they were back on. Tonight in my mind The Wombats proved that they are not one hit wonders and they have the longevity you need to be a proper band. To everyone who was there, these songs mean more than just a 3 minute fist pump endurance test. They have a fan base and most of their tour dates sell out, people at these concerts are able to scream every word along to every song, they’ve become a band with all the adaptations needed to be even bigger and go that step further into those arena’s. The fact of the matter is, if they decide to get over the fact that they are an indie band, they will probably find themselves elevating from the likes of the copper rooms and into the stratosphere.