Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Thursday 9th June
By James Murphy
Photo: Kay Cann
After two years of mostly slammed shut borders, aborted music festival attempts and deferred, delayed or cancelled tours, it’s fitting that one of the first major national tours of the post-lockdown era is the Liverpudlian three-piece, The Wombats. The Matthew Murphy trio that formed at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts not only shares a name with our beloved hairy nosed marsupial, they have consistently charted higher here than in their homeland. The gig was a live introduction to their new album, ‘Fix Yourself, Not The World’, along with a trans-continental tour through their hits, from ‘Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)’ and ‘Greek Tragedy’ to ‘Moving To New York’.
Matthew Murphy has always had the uncanny knack of draping bleak lyrics in colourful clothes; it’s like dancing to Joy Division. New track, ‘Everything I Love Is Going To Die’ is thematically akin to The Flaming Lips’ ‘Do You Realise?’. Like Wayne Coyne’s psych-rock outfit, The Wombats meld music with spectacle: there were furry animal costumes on stage, including a trumpet miming, red-sequinned tux wearing Wombat during ‘Ready For The High’s’ horn section; fire burst from the ceiling during ‘Greek Tragedy’, while pink streamers partially descended from above during ‘Pink Lemonade’, but many remained tethered to the lighting rigging. The band thought it looked like an underground city, or Atlantis, or those hanging beads that delis put in their doorways during the 80s. It was a night that fans would remember long after the show, partially because confetti and streamers might stick around in handbags and jackets for days but mainly because, for many live music fans, this will be the first real return to normal: foreign accents on stage, a heaving throng, dancing while drinking and standing up. What a time to be alive: a light at the end of the tunnel rather than a tunnel at the end of the light.
Prior to The Wombats, prog-pop wunderkind Alfie nimbly noodled his way up and down the fretboard for an eight song set, his first on Australian shores but undoubtedly not his last, given the musical chops and stage presence that he already possesses at just 19.
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