kurzweil-ICH: The Wombats

Auch wenn die Wombats mittlerweile durchaus als alter Hase des Indie-Rocks durchgehen, erscheint heute mit „Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life“ doch tatsächlich „erst“ das vierte Studioalbum der Liverpooler (mehr dazu kommende Woche in meinen Kurzreviews). Zum Release des neuen Albums konnte ich Bassist Tord Øverland-Knudsen ein paar Fragen stellen und konnte so nicht nur Interessantes zum Aufnahmeprozess zur Platte, sondern auch bezüglich seines neuen Hobbys erfahren…

The Wombats Interview

Maik: Congratulations on the release of “Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life” – are you still excited about new albums of yours getting out there?

Tord: Thanks, and yes of course we are still excited! All the hard work and effort our whole team put in finally pays off and our 11 little songs get to go out into the world, on their own, to live new adventures with a load of new people! Once the album is out we look forward to playing the new songs live and hear our fans singing the words back and dancing along. It’s one of the many reasons why we make music.

There has to be a story behind that record title, right? What beautiful person did ruin a life of yours?

There are many stories behind the title and I think it just felt like a great, thought provoking phrase and summed up a lot of the lyrics that Murph writes. The people you love and admire most, whether it’s family, friends or loved ones, are often the ones that can bring you the most pain and heartbreak.

Have there been any “long distance relationship”-difficulties, working on the album from London, Oslo and Los Angeles simultaneously?

Not really no. We haven’t all lived in the same city for 10 years now and whether it’s London to Liverpool or LA to Oslo is irrelevant for us really. With the internet it’s easy to share ideas and Murph would send us songs over and we could go into our studios and jam along. We all got together for four separate two week „writing sessions“ and made new songs from scratch as well as working on some songs Murph had written in LA. Obviously like all relationships you do need to spend time together in the same room at some point!

Murph said you wanted a more chilled and “cool” record, representing the harmony and evolution of the band – do you think you did accomplish that and what is the most “Wombats 2018” track on it?

Haha, I’m not sure it could be described as chilled but yeah, the main thing we wanted to do was to make an album with less rich sounding synths on it than the previous album. The album is still upbeat and energetic but it does have a slightly more laid back feel to it. We’ve always tried to change things up with each album we’ve done and you can’t help but evolve as you get older. I think the best example of the new album sound is „Cheetah Tongue“.

Who came up with the workout being shown in the “Cheetah Tongue” music video and did you try it yourself?

Haha, no but I would love to be thrown around a room by my Grandma!! It was by a video director called Finn Keenan who also did the videos for „Greek Tragedy“ and „Lemon to a Knife Fight„. We love how his brain works and really trust his vision so we just leave him to it!

Can fans of the first record hope for more hard and fast rock tracks to dance to on upcoming records or is the driven in way of the last records the one you’ll go along further?

I think „English Summer“ on Glitterbug was a pretty hard and fast guitar song (especially live!) and the big guitar riffs in „I Don’t Know Why I Like You But I Do“ and „Icecream“ on the new album are definitely going to get some heads banging! Anything is possible and I think we live from song to song, I’m sure one day after way too much coffee we’ll make another song like the 1st album but for now it’s just fun exploring new territories.

My favorite track of the new record is “White Eyes” – what are yours and did the personal judgement about special songs change over time?

I don’t really have a favourite but if I have to choose then the 1st song we made all together in Oslo was „I don’t know why I like you but I do“, the album closer, we wanted to make a more dreamy, almost psychedelic song and I love how different it is to anything we’ve released before. I think it features the fattest riff we’ve ever made and some of the best lyrics Murph’s written. I think my opinions of our songs does morph over the years, sometimes a song that you weren’t happy with at the time of recording can become a favourite after a few years because you forget about all the little details and „imperfections“ you obsessed over at the time!

Your US tour just finished and you have a few weeks before your Europe dates start coming up – what does a band do in this month around a release and between tours? Is it all interviews, television gigs, music video shootings and opening ceremonies of furniture shops? Or even free time?

We’ve been doing acoustic sessions and interviews in France, Norway and the Netherlands this week and now we’re about to start a week of small shows and in store signings around the UK. We teamed up with a charity that is called Music Venue Trust and we’re playing some small venues to celebrate our album coming out and also to help bring awareness to the fact that these grassroots venues are in danger of closing without proper protection and funding. We wouldn’t be a band today if it weren’t for all the great little places we played and learnt our craft over the years. It’s going to be a fun week! Then we have a week or so off before we start rehearsing for the UK/Europe tour starting in March…

In interviews you sometimes mentioned the Smashing Pumpkins as a soundwise comparison – what bands do you call your idols or would like to work with?

We have too many bands we grew up loving to mention but yeah we did (and still do) all love the Pumpkins when we started the band. I don’t think it’s very apparent in our music, except for maybe the verse riff in „Cheetah Tongue“. We are going on tour supporting Weezer and the Pixies around the USA this summer which is so exciting! We used to dance to „Buddy Holly“ every weekend in Liverpool back in the day.

Always being my last question because of the website name (“LangweileDich.net”= “BeBored.not”): What do you do when you feel bored?

My first port of call would be to play the nearest musical instrument to me (usually the piano in my house!) if there isn’t one nearby then I’d read a book or watch a film. I can’t remember the last time I was bored though… oh actually, I was quite bored on our tour bus on a long drive in the USA recently and so I started learning to knit a scarf with our lighting technician! It’s quite soothing…

The Wombats Tour 2018

06.04.18 – Jovel (Münster)
07.04.18 – E-Werk (Köln)
10.04.18 – Neue Theaterfabrik (München)
15.04.18 – Astra (Berlin)
16.04.18 – Docks (Hamburg)

Ticketing: FKP Scorpio.