The Wombats ‘Oh! The Ocean’ album review by Rob Johnson
When The Wombats won Best New Band at the 2008 NME Awards, it was perhaps unlikely at that point to imagine that in 2025 they would be on the verge of releasing their sixth album and still playing huge venues. While many of their peers have fallen by the wayside, The Wombats soldier on, making a mockery of anyone who dismissed them as a novelty band upon arrival. In that respect, they recall Supergrass, initially perceived as the jokers of the Britpop scene but now riding high as one of the more respected bands on the circuit.
While they don’t have the Oxford band’s musical innovation, they match them for moody introspection and uncanny ability to write a chorus. Latest album ‘Oh! The Ocean’ finds the band leaning into what made them so great in the first place – hooks, self-deprecation and barely disguised despair.
The record begins with ‘Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come’ (a song title that screams ‘The Wombats’) and, sure enough, it’s a banger. Named after the book by Jessica Pan, the track is a woozy, summer anthem that sees frontman Matthew Murphy wryly noting “I don’t want to socialise unless I’m getting numb” – a theme that reoccurs across both this album and the rest of the band’s discography.
As with much of The Wombats later work, this sixth record veers between forgettable Wombats-by-numbers (‘Gut-Punch’, ‘Reality is a Wild Ride’) and some of the most achingly beautiful pop songs you’ve ever heard (‘Can’t Say No’, ‘My Head is Not My Friend’ – the latter of which is the best song on the album). Elsewhere, there is a little sonic variation on the guitar breakdown and solo of ‘The World’s Not Out to Get Me, I Am’ (in which Murphy laments “partying alone trying to chase a feeling”) and the uncharacteristically sinister stomp of ‘Swerve (101)’, in which pounding drums and a killer riff accompany Murphy complaining about ‘Tik Tok models with sinister morals’.
‘Grim Reaper’ is another stand out. It’s just like Murphy to write a song that is such a toe tapper about the personification of death and his own stark fear of mortality but it is this uneasy dichotomy that has helped the band endure. As Tom Waits so eloquently described his own music – “Beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”.
The album closes out with the chilled out ‘Lobster’ in which Murphy seems to envy the life of the simple crustacean as they “live and grow without light”. The song has an ethereal pull to it with Murphy sounding at peace for the first time on the record. It’s a fitting end to an album that always tempers the darkness with rays of sunshine.
‘Oh! The Ocean’ probably won’t earn The Wombats any new fans but it is another fine album from one of the most consistent bands on the UK indie scene. Here’s hoping they never change.
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