Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-‘00s indie rock scene with 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation, Liverpool’s The Wombats – Matthew “Murph” Murphy, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen and drummer Dan Haggis – have maintained an incredible upward momentum, amassing 2.5B streams along the way. 2011’s electro-flecked second album The Modern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars; 2015’s third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation years later, with “Greek Tragedy” a viral hit several times over. By 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life they’d stepped up to arenas around the world, and 2022’s Fix Yourself, Not the World was the band’s first UK #1 album. Their recent Reading 2024 Radio 1 tent headline slot proved they continue at the top of their game, overspilling with crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain the core audience 2 decades into their career.

This set launched the new era of The Wombat’s sixth album Oh! The Ocean, a project that grooves with social anxiety, internal strife, compulsive behaviours and the dilemmas and tribulations of Los Angeles life, where Murph and his family live. From behind the band’s deceptively cuddly façade, Murph has always written openly about his anxiety, depression and addictions (he’s now “sober as hell”), but with this collection there’s a sense of progress towards confronting, accepting and coping with his issues. Alongside familiar sounds they explore new genres from glistening tech rock to sci-fi pop, futuristic fuzz rock to bluesy rock’n’roll, with touches of disco and hip-hop-inflections.