I found myself at the Middle East Club in Cambridge again on a weeknight and the place was sold out. The Wombats, from Liverpool, England, haven’t been to the States in a while so I was glad I finally got the chance to see them the other night. The floor was packed with young college kids and adults who “really liked their first album better,” as quoted from the passionate (or drunk) guy standing next to me on the side of the stage. And I’d have to agree with him.
When The Wombat’s first album, A Guide to Love, Loss, & Desperation, came out in 2007, it featured that English indie rock I felt was missing from my life. The rawness and energy of those tracks is what made that album a worthwhile purchase. On April 24th, The Wombats seemed like they were trying not to depend on the songs from their first album, and instead weighed their set down with songs from their 2010 release, This Modern Glitch.
They started their set with “Our Perfect Disease,” the first song off of This Modern Glitch, which, by its nature, is a good opening song. The crowd got pumped and started bouncing right away. But what really kept the crowd going was their transition into “Kill the Director,” a song off of their first album. The energy and the way they ended that song felt like it was the end of their set; it really could have made a great closing song telling from the thunderous applause it received.
But the show kept going, with one Desperation song for every couple of Glitch songs. Looking into the crowd (and ignoring this different tall drunk guy who was lost and swimming around trying to find his friends), I noticed that even the upbeat newer songs weren’t receiving as much reaction from the crowd as the older ones. Fewer people knew the lyrics to songs like “Techno Fan” and “Girls/Fast Cars,” even though they’ve been out for almost two years.
It is understandable if The Wombats were tired of playing their older songs and think their newer ones deserve some more stage time, but their two albums are sonically so different from each other. Glitch sounds so polished and synthesized compared to the basement rock band feel of Desperation. And being in the downstairs room of the Middle East Club, that kind of sound is usually expected.
So instead, they put a different twist on an old song, “Little Miss Pipedream.” It usually features a heavy bass drum and rhythmic hi-hats, but that night they slowed it down and sweetened it up a bit. This rendition tied into the band’s repeated call for the audience members to feel affection for one another and “show the person next to you some love.”
It was great to have The Wombats back in Boston, and their performance shows that the audience doesn’t have control over the set list. But perhaps in a few years This Modern Glitch will have warmed up to people more and The Wombats will have to work hard selling something new to their dedicated fans.
The Wombats can be found at: http://www.thewombats.co.uk/
By: Deanna Archetto
