The Wombats - Fix Yourself, Not The World (2022) [Official Digital Download]

Remarkably, this is the Wombats’ 20th year together, and thanks to prolific touring and streaming they’ve never been bigger. The British trio have gone viral on TikTok with archive track Greek Tragedy, and are booking shows from 200 to 20,000 capacity to promote this fifth album. Like Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life (2018), Fix Yourself, Not the World sticks to the chummy indie playlist pop the band are so good at. Earnest, lovestruck singer Murph (Matthew Murphy) is front and centre of a shiny stew of easily digestible influences. Everything sounds vaguely like something else, without directly plagiarising anyone, although I thought “U2 at the club” more often than I wanted to.

As the song titles warn, the general mood is perky self-help by way of repurposed cliches such as Work Is Easy, Life Is Hard, or stalker anthem If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You. The best tracks were released last year: Ready for the High is a deliciously weird cut-and-shut, and Method to the Madness has a lovely collapsed feeling. Mostly the album settles for sprightly mediocrity, and is often quite pleasurable, if you define pleasure as the absence of pain.

TRACKLIST

1. The Wombats - Flip Me Upside Down
2. The Wombats - This Car Drives All By Itself
3. The Wombats - If You Ever Leave, I'm Coming With You
4. The Wombats - Ready For The High
5. The Wombats - Method To The Madness
6. The Wombats - People Don't Change People, Time Does
7. The Wombats - Everything I Love Is Going To Die
8. The Wombats - Work Is Easy, Life Is Hard
9. The Wombats - Wildfire
10. The Wombats - Don't Poke The Bear
11. The Wombats - Worry
12. The Wombats - Fix Yourself, Then The World (Reach Beyond Your Fingers)



Thanks to the Original customer.