Rain bounces off the vaulted glass ceilings of Victoria station, and hammers down onto the sweeping steps of its neighbour – the AO Arena, its perimeter bristling with a piquet line of (rapidly dampening) bright yellow stewards, guarding access to what was, until recently, Manchester’s largest venue, for tonight: home of The Wombats.
By 8:30, the final few gig goers were trickling in, groups get in and rush to the bar, couples enter hand-in-hand shaking off wet coats, and a few final families struggle along to their seats.
In the lull following the second support act Everything Everything, the cavernous interior around the entrance to the standing area was packed, winding queues lead to bars, stalls, and merch stands– who would you expect to see at this gig? Teenagers? Wine drunk thirty-somethings? The Radio X crowd? They were all there. The Wombats boast of a following based largely in the 18-25 range, this demographic was certainly present; out in force too were the 18–25-year-olds of the former generation, and a few, as it happens, from the one before that.
Stepping foot through the main gate into the floor area of the arena was something of a shock, this is the group’s largest stadium tour to date, and AO is certainly a large stadium – it was full, the comfortably roomy standing area circled by thousands seated in the three blocks boxed around the stage. If the group had been nervous about filling these venues up, they certainly shouldn’t have been.
These thousands in the stands were not seated for long however, as with the first jangles of ‘Moving to New York’, second in the set, they jumped to their feet, and remained on them for the rest of the night.
The Wombats gave a classy set – star-studded: indie classics such as ‘Kill the Director’, ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’, ‘Pink Lemonade’, and ‘Greek Tragedy’ (amongst others), songs which have earned pride of place on the playlist of any respectable sit-in-the-park-and-drink-cans-all-day summer playlist, the beginning chords and choruses of which prompting plastic pint cups to abandon their posts in the hands of two-stepping middle aged men, and take flight, leaving brief contrails of lager and showering fans with warm cider (very Wombats) – and at the eye-watering prices charged in the AO, pint throwing requires a serious tune.
The body of the set, however, came from the group’s latest offering, ‘Oh! The Ocean’, an album marking something of a progression towards maturity from the noughties indie darlings. It felt at times (amongst the uninitiated) something like a live listening party, but one that went down very well. “This is one of the best off the new album”, proclaims a nearby man to his friends at the start of ‘The Worlds Not Out to Get Me, I Am’, it seems as though the fans are listening to the new stuff, and they’re liking it, and that, frankly, is the dream of any band which emerged from the 00s post-Strokes indie boom.
Of course, when you spend your hard-earned peanuts on a ticket to see The Wombats, your money buys you more than just a live music performance – there’s an element of theatricals. At various points, large marsupial musicians take to the stage (wombats with The Wombats – get it?) – equipped with trombones, drum sticks, and mammalian dance moves; confetti cannons explode over the crowd at the crescendo of the pre-encore set; and the audience are invited to take part in the performance, joining in an a acapella moment with the band, and holding up their torches in Coldplay-style moments of sentiment. Is this all a bit much? Pantomime? Probably – but nobody is here for gritty post-punk realisms, they’re here to have a good time, they’re here, often, to be teenagers again.
As the night comes to a close with, ‘Greek Tragedy’, hundreds of inflatables (some blimp-like) are dropped from the ceiling, and the band finally quit the stage. As the thousands of gig-goers began, sound-tracked by popping balloons, to filter out of the arena and into the thrills, romance, and promise of a Mancunian Saturday night, it felt like a job well done.
The Wombats came to Manchester, the city, where, the group remembered, they had come from Liverpool to see gigs like Radiohead as kids, with one goal: to entertain, and to combine the new with the beloved old – they came, and they did just that.
