The Wombats @ ChallengeStadium, Perth (11/10/11)

Fri 14th Oct, 2011 in Gig Reviews

After touring Australia only four months ago (Playing the Groovin’ The Moo festival), The Wombats are back on our shores to support the release of their latest album This Modern Glitch. They kick off the Australian leg of their world tour in Perth, bringing with them massive support acts in the form of Faker and Owl Eyes. This is only the second time The Wombats have had a headline tour in WA and they have had a significant upgrade in venue since their last visit. They have moved from the cramped club Capitol to Challenge Stadium, a venue that can hold thousands of punters. They’ve also attracted a very different fan base since their last visit. Looking around the venue you would observe that the majority of the crowd were enjoying their school holidays.

The first support band of the night, Owl Eyes, attempted to educate this young demographic. On the screen, located at the back of the stage, dictionary definitions were displayed. Words such as ‘sacrosanct’, ‘ingenious,’ ‘momentous’ and…. umm… ‘warehousing’, were displayed on the screen. Owl Eyes is what previous Australian Idol contestant, Brooke Addamo, has decided to name her project. Brooke has a very strong, hypnotic voice and is very interesting to watch as she stomps and sways to the Indie-pop tunes that her backing band plays. At the beginning of the set they were interesting to observe, but a few songs in they all started to sound the same and the audiences attention began to dwindle. Addamo regained the audiences attention by playing a cover of Foster The People’s Pumped Up Kicks which turned into one massive sing-a-long. She ended the set on a high with a song that any avid triple J listener would recognize Raiders.

Before the second act for the night had even hit the stage, the floor section had almost swelled to capacity. The venue went pitch black as Faker strolled onto the stage. Vocalist Nathan Hudson couldn’t stay in one spot for any longer than one second. He could be spotted, running up and down the stage, falling to the floor with his legs left hanging in the air, jumping off speakers, viciously pointing at various members of the crowd or acting out the songs like he did during Sleepwalking as he paced up and down the stage like a zombie. Latest single Dangerous was not the most inspiring track to close the set with, it would have made more sense to finish with a more energetic song such as This Heart Attack which got a instant crowd reaction as soon as it was played. Still, Faker provided an excellent warm up for the nights headliners.

The Wombats arrived on stage to the sound of a helicopter landing. Thunderous applause erupted as the opening notes to Our Perfect Disease were played. An animated heart rate monitor was displayed on the screen. The trend of relating the images on the screen to the song continued for the next couple of tunes. Trees were displayed for Party In A Forest, (Where’s Laura?) and fog for Jump Into The Fog.

Lead vocalist Matthew Murphy pointed out a group of ‘Shit faced’ looking punters dancing in the top right corner of the seated section before announcing that they were going to play a really old song from their first album. He was soon corrected by drummer Dan Haggis who mentioned that they were actually going to play a new song off their recent album. With that Last Night I Dreamt rang out.

Part of the attraction of going to see a Wombats live show is to listen to their stage banter. They talk very casually amongst themselves between songs and seem to forget about the three thousand people standing in front of them, which makes it all the more amusing. Dan mentioned that because they had just hopped of a plane that he felt like he had just taken some hallucinogenic drugs, which he swore he had never taken before. Murph then chimed that he had been with him as he has taken drugs, which led into a story about how they marched around a garden thinking they were in the army. Somehow Murph managed to segue into the next song by saying this incident happened well after 1996. The crowd responded maniacally to this latest single.

Regular viewers of cult TV show the Inbetweeners got excited as the opening chords to Moving to New York rang out. Although many people in the audience were familiar with the older songs, it was the newer material which attracted the biggest reaction.

Many months ago The Wombats received a lashing for pulling out of the West Australian leg of the Groovin’ The Moo Tour. Murph promised via facebook that he would bring lollipops upon the bands return to WA to make it up to the fans. Well, they certainly are ‘Wombats of their word’ as they proceeded to throw 1000 lollipops into the crowd.
Murph warned that Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves) could be the last song of the night unless the crowd made enough noise to warrant their return to the stage. So, at the conclusion of Tokyo the audience made as much noise as they possibly could. The band were obviously satisfied with the deafening roars and the thunderous stomping because they returned to the stage to perform rocky, extended versions of Anti-D and Let’s Dance to Joy Division.

Punters exited the venue to the Jurassic Park theme, an appropriate ending to the monstrous show that those in attendance had just witnessed.