Live Review: The Wombats

An instrumental string version of Tales Of Girls, Boys And Marsupials strikes up as three circular light formations flash before our eyes. The Wombats get into position and charge forward with Kill The Director, which boasts the signature brand of super catchy guitar riffs and witty lyrics that we've come to adore the trio for most. Tonight's a celebration of their very first album, A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation that was released ten years ago. We're certainly getting all those nostalgic feels that made us first fall in love with these indie-rock marsupials. 

"I wanna see your best slutdrop in about T-minus five seconds," yells frontman Matthew Murphy. The audience obeys by dropping down and popping right back up in one quick dance move. The Wombats throw in some of their greatest hits including 1996 and Give Me A Try, which the crowd absolutely loses their shit over. Murphy uses adjectives like "Wonderful, beautiful and amazing" to describe the audience before him and it's obvious that we all feel the same way about their performance. 

Murphy drapes an audience banner over a speaker that reads 'Celebrating irony since '07.' He reminisces about the first show they played in Melbourne when many of us were introduced to them. "I remember we woke up about 15 minutes before the show feeling extremely jet-lagged and had a tequila shot right before going on stage," he reveals. After a few fan favourites, they head back into some first album territory with a few more tracks that they haven't played for a long time. We help them out by singing along on My First Wedding and Here Comes The Anxiety.  

They've done quite a few wacky videos over the years but one that stands out to Murphy was for Lost In The Post. "If you get a chance to watch the video, think twice before you do this as you can never un-see it," he jokes. Backfire At The Disco takes them back to a dark and stormy night in Liverpool and reminds Murphy of the accompanying cringeworthy clip where the band can be seen roller skating around in colourful lycra outfits.

They take things down a little bit as Murphy throws water to the audience to cool down. We share a beautiful moment during Little Miss Pipedream before notching things up again for us to go completely nuts for Techno Fan. "It's a Wednesday night but fuck it, we'll all be dead soon!" he shouts. The strobes flash frenetically across the room as green lasers shoot out in different directions and smoke blasts up into the air. The momentum doesn't stop. 

They pretend that Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) is their last song but of course they come back for an encore. "If you're not jumping up and down for this next song then something's going wrong." Let's Dance To Joy Division signals the confetti canons to set off, and Murphy dives into the moshpit for the final chorus as we all sing in unison, "So happy, yeah we're so happy!" He holds a furry toy wombat mascot overhead and takes a final bow. "We'll hopefully see you again really soon." It seems like that could never be soon enough.