The Wombats @ Metro City
w/ Verge Collection
Thursday, May 11, 2017
British indie rockers, The Wombats, returned to Metro City on Thursday to play a sold out show in celebration of their debut album A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation turning 10 years old.
The show was opened by Perth locals, Verge Collection, who proved to be anything but rubbish. The band even incited a few singalongs, especially to the triple J played track, Our Place. Overall, Verge Collection were a great opening act for the show.
The Wombats opened the show with first album favourite Kill The Director which got the crowd dancing, jumping and singing along, before moving on to the likes of Moving to New York, 1996 and Give Me A Try which included pyrotechnics and an even bigger singalong.
After more crowd favourites, the band jumped into some older tracks from the first album in celebration of its 10th Birthday, with Murph saying, “Sing along if you know the words, because I might have forgotten,” before launching into Here Comes The Anxiety. Lost in the Post, My First Wedding, Backfire at the Disco, which Murph claimed is his favourite song to play, and Little Miss Pipedream followed, and despite the songs being older, the band still played them as if they had been playing them at every show for years and years.
These songs, mixed in with some newer favourites like Your Body is a Weapon and Techno Fan, made for a great setlist with a good mix of old and new, and the band nailed which songs would get the crowd dancing and singing along.
Near the end of the set, the band suffered some unfortunate technical difficulties in the middle of Emoticons and had to cut the song short. While the problems were sorted, the band apologised and carried on playing Tokyo instead, before going off stage for the “end” of their set.
Of course, the end wasn’t really the end, and as the crowd knowingly shouted for an encore, the band took their time, assumedly trying to fix the technical problems.
When they returned to the stage for their planned encore, they once again apologised, and played Emoticons again, this time in full, with no problems. This was followed by Greek Tragedy which also incited a large singalong.
The show was closed with the track that started it all for The Wombats. Taken from their first album and still their biggest track, and by far the crowd’s favourite, Let’s Dance to Joy Division sent the crowd went mad. With jumping, dancing and singing along, the pyrotechnics and lights made the song an excellent way to end the show.
As always, the band thanked the crowd and ended with their little jam session Euroscheisse.
Overall, the show included appropriate amounts of pyros, an excellent light show, a great setlist, and songs that were executed well. The band were tight, with even the older songs sounding like they weren’t just added to the setlist for this Australian tour.
KIERRA POLLOCK
