Live Review: The Wombats, Elderbrook

Stretched between his synth and sample pad, Elderbrook's Alexander Kotz warms up the ice-cold Melbournian crowd with his deep bass and pounding melodies.

One song in and the crowd is already grooving along to Difficult To Love with its light pop elements that belong at a summer music festival. New song Capricorn's running drum beat gives off Pnau vibes and all phones go up as 2017's Cola fills the room with its sweet electro-pop. As the bass gets cranked up to 110% for the final song, it's so violent we can feel it in our bones. Even our teeth are shaking.

A cartoon wombat lights the backdrop, slowly opening and closing its eyes to taunt the crowd. Eventually, all goes black and a larger wombat graphic appears with terrifyingly wide eyes as Liverpool's The Wombats emerge in a sea of red for Cheetah Tongue. The room is covered in rainbow lights and the party begins; The Wombats are experts at this.

Vocalist Matthew Murphy is dressed in fancy florals and bassist Tord Overland Knudsen looks like the happiest man alive, kicking his legs, jumping and running all over his area of the stage. You can feel the passion and excitement oozing from each member as the crowd screams "this is no Bridget Jones" to strobes and coloured lights.

Each song that fills the air is coupled by an extraordinary backdrop matching the song's themes, a pair of eyes for White Eyes, multi-coloured lasers and a rainbow wombat for Techno Fan and the coolest customised wombat emojis that cluster and fill the screen for Emoticons. "I like to sing songs about my favourite fruit," Murphy states, "not kiwis of course," a dig to our New Zealand neighbours, which leads into Lemon To A Knife Fight. There's a happy medium of new and classic Wombats tunes to fill up the hour and 45-minute set, an easy feat considering their catalogue spans over a decade. Just when we thought the party couldn't get wilder, a crew dressed in wombat costumes emerge to dance their hearts out during Let's Dance To Joy Division and our smiles couldn't get any wider.

The encore that ultimately ensues has come too fast. Ginormous coloured balloons are thrown around the crowd during Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) as the crowd struggles to dance, sing and focus on keeping them afloat. There's an overwhelming sense of pure joy and happiness as Greek Tragedy closes the night, with our feet sore and our hearts full.