THE WOMBATS
TUESDAY JUNE 3, 2008
BLENDER THEATER, NYC
WORDS BY AMY WAGNER
PHOTOS BY KYLE DEAN REINFORD

There's something special about bands that hail from Liverpool and The Wombats are no exception. It's not just the inherited nostalgia that goes along with coming from the same place as John, Paul, George and Ringo, though the group's guitar player/singer Matthew Murphy and drummer/singer Dan Haggis did meet at McCartney's Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. More likely, the stellar music that comes from the port city is a result of the magical mixture of layered pop rock sounds, strong songwriting skills and a cheeky sense of humor that is distinctly Liverpudlian- i.e. gifts The Wombats have in spades. During their hyper fun set, guitarist Murphy described the group's home base as "a little known town called Liverpool with huge shitting seagulls". Lucky for us, the three piece - Murphy, Haggis and Norwegian bass player Tord Øverland Knudsen chose to leave their seagulls behind to share some of the solid songs off their upcoming debut album A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation (Roadrunner) due out June 24th in the U.S.

The quirky pop rockers set the tone of the show from the minute they took the stage. Under a blue haze, the guys stood together at one microphone and sang "Tales of Boys, Girls and Marsupials" a cappella. As quick as you could say, "What a nice bunch of lads!" the tide turned as The Wombats kicked out their hard-charging song "Kill The Director". Murphy charged onto the drum riser and Knudsen cut slashes in the air, swinging his bass and thrashing across the stage. Murphy spits his lyrics out in bursts but never loses the arch humor lying just beneath the surface of their twisted up-tempo tunes. He introduced the band's song "Party in a Forest (Where's Laura)" by egging on everyone to "caress somebody's buttocks that you've never met before". Fortunately, the Wombats had already turned the Blender Theatre into one great big happy zone so no one seemed to mind a little extra friendliness coming from a perfect stranger.

Song after song mixed great rock riffs with perfect pop "woo-ooo's", but The Wombats saved the best for the last half of their set. The thunderous rocker "Moving to New York" put the bounce in the crowd and had a sea of hands waving in the air. Just when you thought the room couldn't get any more raucous, the group pulled out their cut you to the bone/rock you to your silly song called "Let's Dance to Joy Division". Just whispering the words "Joy Division" is enough to set an indie-loving music crowd on fire but, when you have a band like The Wombats hollering and fanning the flames - well, it doesn't get any better than that.