In 2003, a trio of musicians met at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and quickly formed a band with an unusual name: The Wombats. Wombats are a marsupial native to Australia that poop cubes. I am not kidding; look it up. With their quirky band name, the Wombats began releasing music, gaining traction in the United Kingdom before making their waves across the United States.
In my personal life, the Wombats were a band that my britpop-enthusiast mom discovered in 2017, their song “Turn” drawing her to the band. Throughout my adolescence, the Wombats often made a sonic appearance. While I did not keep a close eye on them, when I saw that they were coming to Newport, I applied for a press pass out of pure nostalgia, and to my surprise, was approved to cover the show.
Per usual, I arrived at the venue last minute, missing the opener. After seeing the full room from the ticket office, I decided against venturing into the pit and instead tried my luck somewhere against the railing. At 9:15, the lights dimmed, and the three members of the Wombats strutted out, playing a song off their new album, “Sorry I’m Late I Didn’t Want to Come.” Following the jaunty opening song, the Wombats played “Moving to New York,” which better set the tone of the show in my opinion. What the Wombats do best is their head-bangers, so the next two songs “Cheetah Tongue” and “Techno Fan” were well-received by the audience.
Around me, it was a sea of millennials. I do not mean this lightly; I was the youngest person there, besides the parents who brought their elementary-aged children. In the front of the pit, there was a child small enough to be on his father’s shoulders the entire show.
The age-range surprised me. Most of their songs are in regards to partying, fighting, and sex, yet the demographic made the concert feel like a family show. At one point in the show, the lead singer introduced the crew’s “pet,” which was a person dressed in a wombat suit pretending to play the trumpet. Despite how horrendously the fursuit cringed me out, I persisted because of the music. But then, during their last song “Let’s Dance to Joy Division,” three people in wombat costumes danced around the stage. At this point, it was nearing 11 pm, and I had seen the songs I had wanted to, so this amount of kitchy soured my view of the band.
Despite my grievances, I still enjoyed the show put on, full of high energy and almost two hours long. The woman next to me knew every single lyric to all of their songs, so my spirit was raised being in proximity to the world’s biggest Wombats fan. For me, the highlights came at the end of the show, for my connection to the Wombats is through their older, more popular songs like “Lemon to a Knife Fight” and “Turn.” During those songs, I FaceTimed my mom to show her the love in the room for the band she discovered eight years ago. Although the demographic of the show was confusing and unexpected, the music rocked the venue and so did the vivacious energy of the diverse crowd.
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