The wackiest and most lovable Liverpudlians to transport quirky powerpop across the Mersey since John, Paul, George, and Ringo first headed to Hamburg, the Wombats charmed all of Britain and beyond when they first reared their messily moptopped heads back in 2006. Despite starting off as some sort of madcap joke band when they first formed at Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (at their infamously shambolic early gigs, they wore jesters' hats, did between-song stand-up and recited random Facts Of The Day, and basically "tried to make people uncomfortable"), they soon realized they could craft some seriously stellar indie pop. Songs like the surprisingly upbeat "Let's Dance To Joy Division," Jude Law-namechecking "Kill The Director," and broodingly post-punky "Moving To New York" were some of the best and brightest U.K. singles of the year, retaining all of the 'Bats batty British humor and pairing it with superb songwriting.
It's been way too long since the Wombats (Matthew Murphy, Dan Haggis, and Norwegian transplant Tord Øverland-Knudsen) spread their wings--the last we heard from then was a teaser EP in 2009. But thankfully, they're now set to release their long-awaited full sophomore set, The Wombats Proudly Present: This Modern Glitch (the follow-up to 2007's The Wombats Proudly Present: A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation).
The album is slated for a U.S. release in April 2011, but it's already yielded two typically bizarrely 'Batty music videos: one amusingly chronicling their Monkees-like band-on-the-run antics in Tokyo, the other a depicting a creepy Lynchian crawl through a babydoll- and model-infested faraway hotel.
And with a tour of America kickstarting this month, surely the Wombats' adventures are far from over. Fly Wombats, fly!
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