Live Recap: (Everything Is Going Wrong) But We're So Happy, Thanks to The Wombats!
The Wombats returned to The Vic Theatre in Chicago on Saturday, November 1st, performing a sold-out show as part of their Oh! The Ocean Tour.
As you may have guessed, the tour was in honor of the band’s 6th studio album entitled Oh! The Ocean, which was released earlier this year. While I arrived at the venue, I took a mental stroll down memory lane and realized the first time I saw The Wombats was in 2015 in support of their 3rd album Glitterbug, meaning I’ve been a fan of the trio for more than a decade now. The (over) 10-year anniversary of my first Wombats gig felt very sentimental, but there’s a warm sense of comfort that the band exuded in their performance this past weekend that also made it feel like no time had really passed at all.
Matthew “Murph” Murphy, Tord Øverland Knudsen, and Dan Haggis took the stage just after 9:15PM, settling themselves in front of a furry backdrop—or in Haggis’ case, settling onto a drum set that was decked out in the same “Wombats fuzz” that was giving “stroke the furry wall” from the movie Get Him to the Greek (IYKYK). The band began the set with the introductory song off of their latest album, entitled “Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come.” In the song, Murph croons every socially anxious introvert’s truth, saying “It’s not that I hate you, I just hate everyone/ I don’t want to socialize unless I’m getting numb.” While I’m sure many of the audience members (myself included) can relate to that sentiment, fortunately we were all able to get past it to show up that night, and we were rewarded with a very special performance.
Following the new song, all of us ventured back down memory lane together with a handful of songs from earlier records, including “Moving to New York” from the debut album and “Cheetah Tongue” from Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life.
As the musical journey continued on, the bandmates took time to toss in several anecdotes, both about the new and older material. Post “Techno Fan” and Pre-”Kate Moss,” Murph addressed the crowd saying, “That last song was about a weird night out in London, and this next one is about my old neighborhood in LA. Somewhere in the pandemic everyone started getting divorced and doing really weird shit. It’s still going on to this day to be honest, so this song is dedicated to funky times.”
Dan Haggis later on addressed the crowd, saying that songs have a way of standing still in time, and that felt so fitting to the sentimental air of nostalgia at the gig—the time has passed, but these songs from over a decade ago remain a timeless constant in the lives of so many music fans. Haggis continued, “We’d love you to join in on this next song, it’s an a cappella. We were trying to think of a way to start off our first album and this weird little number popped into our heads,” before the trio launched into a rendition of “Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials” that bled right into “Kill The Director.”
The band’s energy onstage mostly remained amped up—from Knudsen jumping and kicking across the stage, to Murph climbing up on Haggis’ drumset and a friend donning a full-on wombat costume joining in for “Ready for the High”— but they took the time to strip things down for an acoustic performance of “Lethal Combination.” Murph prefaced the performance telling a story about a night out that he and his wife had at Barney’s Beanery in LA. “The barman said you guys need to exit this establishment now. I said why do we have to do that, and he said, we’ll you’ve been asleep for an hour. I said no, we haven’t been, and I turned around to look at my wife, and she was passed out on the bar. Then on the way back she said, we’re a lethal combination, us two, or something like that.”
Other than the one acoustic track, the songs remained upbeat and fast-paced for the rest of the main setlist, which closed out with their single “Turn.” The band teased their encore saying that was their “last song” with a wink, and they left the stage to overwhelming applause and calls for more songs.
The Wombats didn’t disappoint and came back to close out with their hit “Greek Tragedy” and “Let’s Dance to Joy Division,” the latter of which the band sings “Everything is going wrong, but we're so happy.” If you turn on the news or doomscroll TikTok, it’s easy to see the things that are going wrong in the world, but art and music like that by The Wombats is always a much-needed reminder that there is good and a sense of community in the world. It’s truly impossible to be sad at a Wombats show—especially when they brought out multiple friends in wombat costumes for the final song!
If you need another ray of sunshine, the band recently put out a new single “Holy Sugar” that’s a preview of their extended cut of Oh! The Ocean, out December 5th. Be sure to check out upcoming tour dates for The Wombats and snag your copy of their latest album here.
