Following two months off for the holidays, the Wombats, a well-established British indie rock trio that formed in Liverpool in 2003, are set to headline House of Blues on Thursday, Feb. 12, as part of a tour in support of their sixth studio album, Oh! The Ocean.
While still infusing lonely lyrics with stylistically distinct upbeat production, the record finds three men closing the door on their thirties and greeting their forties with starkly different perspectives than their early 2000s selves. The album’s opening track, “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want To Come,” sets the tone for the high-energy effort and often kicks off the live show too.
“We start the set a lot of the time with it; it’s a nice tempo,” drummer Dan Haggis says of the track during a recent Zoom call. “It deals with social anxiety, but it has a slight humor to it. I think it’s something that [singer-guitarist Matthew] ‘Murph’ [Murphy] definitely feels on a regular basis. And so, he needed to write a song about it.”
Haggis recalls the scene and mood of the track being set for him in the studio by the album’s co-producer John Congleton alongside the band members.
“The end of that song was, like, loads of percussion going on. And John was like, ‘It just needs to sound like you’re letting loose. You’re at like a frat party,’ – which I’ve never been to. ’You’re at this party, someone’s just given you, like, a bongo.’ So, I took my top off, put my cap on backwards,” Haggis cheekily shares. “That’s my memory of that song.”
Twenty-three years is a long time to be a band without a hiatus in the rearview or on the horizon. Haggis admits it’s challenging to toe the line of creating something sonically different and exciting while remaining in the well-worn world of the Wombats.
“Sometimes, we try to make things not sound like the Wombats,” he says.
Haggis declares that the band members aren’t the best judges of that sort of thing, however, since they are so close to the band’s catalogue.
“I remember playing [a] song to my cousin, who’s, you know, listened to us since before we even put our first album out. And she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this sounds like classic Wombats now.’ And I was like, ‘Fuck! This sounds so different to me.’”
Haggis goes on to reference the band’s most streamed song on Spotify, 2015’s “Greek Tragedy,” which claims a consistent slot on the Wombats’ setlist.
“Me and [bassist, backing vocalist, keyboardist] Tord [Øverland Knudsen] were in Liverpool and Murph was in L.A. We had a bunch of ideas. We had, like, six or seven that we wanted to play to Murph when he came to Liverpool,” says Haggis. “We were like, ‘Here’s what we’ve been working on. See if any of these really feel like there’s a song there that you start hearing melodies for.’”
Haggis hails “Greek Tragedy” as one of those serendipitous surprise moments when, even though the three of them know each other so well, they can’t always read their counterparts’ minds.
“And so, we played through some of them. [Murph] was like, ‘Yeah. Cool, cool, cool.’ And then, got to the end and he was like, ‘Is that it?’ And we were like, ‘Well, there’s one other one, but [we] don’t know if it’s a Wombats song, really.’ He went, ‘Just play it.’ So, we played it, and he went, ‘Send me that. Now.’”
Haggis points to “Kate Moss,” off the band’s latest record, as another time they were trying not to sound like the Wombats.
“The demo was more in the upbeat, high-energy, Wombats kind of world. And – Murph in particular – he was like, ‘I just think we can do something way more interesting and different with this one.’”
So, they stripped it back and began again, nearly from scratch.
“We got this loop of the drums, just to kind of showcase what it could be like, and very quickly, it was like, ‘Oh, this feels really cool, actually.’”
Initially, Murph had been singing the whole song up the octave. Haggis remembered the group suggesting that he try singing it down the octave.
“It took on a completely different quality. Then, the direction was just kind of sealed for it,” says Haggis. “It just clicked.”
Haggis credits the band’s longevity, in part, to members feeding side projects.
“Honestly, it’s so helpful, because it means that someone doesn’t feel like their idea is just dead and buried. It’s kind of like, ‘Alright, cool. This is for a different thing then.’”
That’s only after, of course, the band has exhausted all its ideas, even the quirkiest ones.
Taking healthy space from each other helps keep the band in a positive place as well.
Haggis shares that he is “an adventurer” and loves walking around the cities he’s playing.
He perks up at the mention of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s elite reputation, repeating at the end of the conversation that he will be checking it out for himself.
“[On tour,] it’s good to know when to just go, ‘I’m gonna have my own little independent day.’ And I think that, creatively and music-wise, it’s everyone’s ideas and rabbit holes being explored.”
And band members have a shared love for the stage that helps keep them motivated.
“Playing live is kind of the ultimate payoff of everything you do, and that moment that you look forward to and the chance to just be in a room with a load of other people, all coming together –from all walks of life— all singing the same stuff, and just having a good time,” says Haggis. “It’s such a feel-good moment, hopefully for everyone (laughs). But you know, for us, we just get a buzz from playing and it’s a good workout as well, so the adrenaline is always flying high. And we just can’t believe we’re still doing it after all this time. It’s kind of surreal. We get to go and play in all these random places all around the world that we never dreamt of going to, and there’s people in the crowds, you know, singing along and you hear stories from fans about how they discovered us, and what the songs mean to them and their families. It’s all that stuff. It just, it feels like an adventure.”
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