On Monday evening, I had the privilege of getting to see The Wombats return to Scotland since 2019 and blimey, were the audience in for a treat!
April 18th saw the return of The Wombats to Glasgow for their two-night residential at the institution that is, The Barrowlands Ballroom. The Show began with the amazing support of Sports Team who really got the crowd riled up and ready for what was to come. Being in the pit during the support alone, gave a sense of how the night was shaping up, we were two songs in and it was already getting sweaty… VERY sweaty.
As Sports Team had wrapped up, the house music was on and the crowd were ready for Matthew, Tord and Dan who were going to be hit with a wave of excitement and screaming, the minute they stepped on stage.
The guys opened their set with the opening track of their new record, ‘Flip Me Upside Down’ which instantaneously got the crowd going and so there wasn’t a quiet voice in the room.
The lads then began to work their way through the setlist playing tracks like ‘Moving to New York’ and ‘Give Me a Try’ before beginning ‘Ready for the High’ which seen the onstage appearance of the giant, red trombone playing wombat who we later discovered was the tour manager when his head fell off… revealing his true identity. With this being said, it was all in good spirits and he got a good cheering when Matthew revealed that it wasn’t a particular favourite part of the TM’s job because of the stage fright element.
Back to the gig and the lads continued through the setlist playing a variety of hits both older and new which kept the crowd entertained all throughout the evening.
Along the way Matthew also treated everyone to a solo acoustic performance of Lethal Combination which was a particular crowd singalong tune which kept the spirits high within the Ballroom.
As the show started to wind down in terms of the set remainder, the hits kept coming as we seen the performances of ‘Greek Tragedy’, ‘Tokyo’ and ‘If you Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You’ which rounded off the gents performance nicely.
Now in the Glasgow music scenes traditional fashion, this set wasn’t just wrapped up and finished. No, there is always the ‘One more tune’ chant at the end which led the lads into a fantastic encore of tunes including the ever so popular ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division.’ Again this was a real crowd pleaser and the vibe was that it was the perfect way to round off what had been a fantastic evening from the very start.
The Wombats then went on to play a further night on the Tuesday which was again sold out and can be imagined to be just as good of an energetic and high-spirited evening as the previous one. It’s been very exciting to see such a positive response to the return of live music since Covid and these guys definitely fulfilled the needs of all the gig-goers that went along to the show.
If you haven’t seen these guys before, trust me when I say, you’re missing out. They’ve got an array of shows in the upcoming pipeline whether it be own shows or festivals and you’d be mad not to get a ticket.
