By I’m sorry to report but it’s not quite what I was hoping. When you think of The Wombats, you think British, jumpy indie rock music. However in their latest album ‘Glitterbug’ it has just literally been glittered with pop, to produce a safe, but not spectacular album. Their 2007 debut album, A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation was a strong start to the indie scene and they continued that in 2011 with ‘This Modern Glitch’, which I think is their best album by far, songs like ‘Jump Into The Fog’ and ‘1996’ best describe what The Wombats should sound like, “beating those teenage kids” and the discovery of their success.
The hit singles ‘Emoticons’ and ‘Greek Tradegy’, show the boys have matured a lot over the four years showing they still have what it takes in the indie rock scene. The titles match the sad lyrics and the music video… Well that’s just the same to be honest. The album demonstrations a turbulent relationship between an English boy and a Californian girl – Singer and guitarist Matthew Murphy’s long-distance romantic relationship with a girl he began dating in L.A. while he was still based in London. Their sense of humour, not to mention their fondness for pop culture references, remains intact and work brilliantly in their music, which is most likely to do with their great world success.
‘Glitterbug’ occupies an equidistant point between the lyrical and guitars of ‘Passion Pit’ and the drum and bass of The 1975’, whereas ‘The English Summer’ and ‘Pink Lemonade’ bear much resemblance to the post-punk The Wombats made their name with, and both end up falling rather flat. ‘It’s ironic that a band whose singer once sang in 2007, “If this is a rom-com, kill the director” would be producing something like this. But there’s more drama here than in previous works: Maybe Murphy is killing the director himself or someone else, like in ‘Greek Tragedy’.
Glitterbug mostly seems like it was born of a frustration of not caught the Americans yet. The significant moment of the album comes when all the instruments drop out of “Give Me a Try” and Murphy declares, “We could be gigantic!” If you asked him, he’d probably say it was the girl in L.A., but he seems to also be not-so-covertly courting potential American fans. You can hear the same beseeching subtext in the single, “Your Body Is a Weapon”, where Murphy sings “Is it such fantasy that I should think someone like you could love a creep like me?”
The Wombats will live and die by their singles, which I have to say, they may have just pulled it off.
