The Wombats - Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life

Rating:

No band is better at being The Wombats, than The Wombats.

The Wombats have led a strange life. Born into a scene increasingly bogged down in indie landfill, their debut album sparked and crackled with an energy that - while of its time - did everything it should. Packed with youthful anthems of cross-Atlantic relocations and disco adventures, it was oil to the watered down imitations which followed en mass.

The fact remains, no band is better at being The Wombats than The Wombats themselves. That’s exactly the role they find themselves in on ‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’, but while for many the world turns, leaving them behind, for The Wombats it’s spun in their favour. ‘Lemon To A Knife Fight’ sounds just as immediate as any greatest hits, ‘Black Flamingo’ is the sherbet tinged desert rock banger nobody knew they needed, while ‘I Don’t Know Why I Like You But I Do’ is a twisting, swooning closer that proves there’s depth below the surface.

Never letting life remove the escapist joy from their sound, The Wombats’ genius is in knowing exactly what they’re best at. Dan Harrison