The Wombats - Tales ofLove, Loss andDesperation

Tue 15th Jan, 2008 in Music Reviews

With a name like The Wombats it is admittedly, somewhat difficult to take this three piece Liverpudlian indie-pop band seriously. Especially with the acapella opening track of the album, in which all three Wombats sing and clap about ‘Tales of Boys, Girls and Marsupials…doop do’ in perfect pitch harmonies. However just as you dismiss the album as the makings of a simpleton pop band with ambitions of cracking The Wiggles’ target market, Kill the Director kicks in with a fast paced drum beat and guitar riff which makes you sit up and pay attention. Although The Wombats seem like just another band who have become popular if only because of the success of the vaguely cool indie/alternative pop genre, there is something enchantingly sweet about the band’s pure pop nuggets that make you forget about the dark, ‘deep’ world of indie and have a bit of fun.

Tales of Love, Loss and Desperation is exactly what the album is all about. The band’s lyrics are both self-deprecating and un-apologetically cheesy, a combination that gives us the sense that they don’t care about harnessing the ‘angst of a teenage band’ to write a cliched song ‘about a gender I’ll never understand’ – after all isn’t that what being young is all about? Each song flows perfectly into the next like entries in an old journal or a conversation with an old friend, full of witty anecdotes about embarrassing romantic encounters that make you wish you were never that young or that stupid.

Such subject matter is most endearing in tracks like Kill the Director and Let’s Dance to Joy Division. The energetic rhythms of the drums and guitar riff behind the very English (I mean the accent) musings of Matthew Murphy on vocals will have you unknowingly toe tapping and head bopping. But, it’s the slightly less frenetic songs that are the standouts on the album such as Moving to New York and even Patricia the Stripper – which is yes, you guessed it, about falling in love with a “lady of the night”. The subtle oohs of the back up chorus ( rovided by drummer Dan Haggis and bassist Tord Knudsen ) and the mix of catchy riffs with slightly more complex rhythms than the other tracks, creates light and shade in the songs, making these tracks more interesting than the conventional, repetitive hooks of the more straight forward, radio friendly tracks such as Lost in the Post and Backfire at the Disco.

However, although we’d all would hate to admit it, it’s the sing along choruses or rather the repetition of a cringe worthy lines such as ‘Go to Santa Go’ and ‘this is no Bridget Jones’, which are what makes the album so damn digestible. The Wombats have used all the love-to-hate cliches of pop to their advantage, creating impossibly charming, brit pop with a twist of individuality which only a teenage English band could pass off as enthusiastic wit rather than just plain annoying. Their debut album shows us that they are a band more than capable of creating a catchy pop song which will stay in your head for much longer than you would like it too.