Fix Yourself, Not The World - The Wombats: Review
The Wombats
are a British pop rock band who emerged in the back half of the 2000's with an art school image and a strange fluke hit in the UK alternative scene with their song Let's Dance To Joy Division. To this day it's the bands most well known track though they've carried on releasing music regularly to pretty consistent commercial success. In recent years they have attracted some social media attention with a handful of their songs, most notably Greek Tragedy generating attention on Tik Tok and Instagram.
Review By Lav:
I'll start this review by saying something that might surprise you, I like The Wombats. Even though they have a pretty inconsistent discography and have never really been a critically acclaimed act I consider myself somewhat of a fan of their generally fun attitude and simple, hooky approach to songwriting. Maybe it's because I didn't hear them in their original element as merely one in a sea of generic British indie bands and instead caught them two albums deep when for some reason they blew up across the halls of my American middle school. But I've always had a soft spot for their debut album and while I'm not crazy about the follow-up I can genuinely say they've been on a decade long trail of improvement starting with 2015's Glitterbug and continuing onto 2018 Beautiful People Will Ruin Yout Life, their best record since the debut. I was hoping that improvement would continue here, it did not. I feel pretty confident in saying this is the bands worst album and while there are moments here and there where I see exactly what made me a fan in the first place, they come back to back with some of the most confusing creative decisions of the bands enitre career.
Method To The Madness is the ballad of the record and also for some reason was the lead single. I think it's mostly boring but the bridge in particular really is one of the albums lyrical low points. The Wombats have never been known for particularly great lyrics but honestly this album is packed full of some of the most painful cliches and loudly awkward lyrics I can imagine. It isn't even just the lyrics themselves but also the painful thematic sentiments which aim for the bands classic sense of youthful abandon but without any of the weird charm they once had in spades. Opening track Flip Me Upside Down is an okay song if you can ignore the lyrics but it introduces another big problem on the record, the band has forgotten how to write hooks.
This Car Drives All By Itself at least has the potential to be a little better with a cool synth groove behind the pop rock instrumental but the hook is painfully flat and gets boring before it's even halfway over the very first time you hear it. Wildfire is the last song on the album chronologically that I have any interest in but it also whiffs hard on the hook. A decent guitar lick isn't enough to save the track from the black hole that is its chorus.
The worst song on the entire album is Ready For The High. The songwriting isn't a disaster or anything but it's really the vocals that might be the worst thing I've ever heard on a Wombats song. I know I touched on this earlier but the final stretch of this record really is pretty bleak. Maybe it's just that I'm over the band and their sound by this point on the record but even when I listen to the final 3 tracks here on their own I just don't see much redeemable about them.
I know I sound like a little bitch at this point in the review but the album did it to me, there are songs here I actually do like. If You Ever Leave, I'm Coming With You has become the hit song of the album which makes sense because it's another youthful explosion of aimlessness that borrows from their biggest hit by making reference to a far more beloved band, this time it's Radiohead. I actually have to admit I find the bouncy guitars pretty fun and the hook is decent at least up until the point where the manipulated vocals come in. Everything I Love Is Going To Die is equally okay even if the title and hook feel like they should be met with a lyrical sentiment a bit deeper than "fuck it, let's dance".
People Don't Change, Time Does is probably my favorite song on the record and has some heartland rock War On Drugs style guitar that I didn't expect to hear. Even with some Urban Outfitters t-shirt level lyrics I think the track manages to bring continuously good refrains. Work Is Easy, Life Is Hard has a pretty cool desert rock groove among the most detailed instrumental on the record. I've gone back and forth on the track a bit but for the most part I enjoy it and it reminds me of some of the better tracks of the bands middle years.
Fix Yourself, Not The World isn't great but it's hardly a disaster. I actually think the album meets the minimum requirement for pop rock instrumentation throughout and even manages to grab me with flashy guitar work alone here and there. But ultimately this is a very shallow listen and one that doesn't have the hooky songwriting the band normally delivers to make up for it. For the first record they're releasing since blowing up in the incomprehensible stream of tik tok viral hits, I thought they would lean into their catchiest instincts a bit more. 4/10
This cover is a maximalists dream. The Where's Waldo feel of it makes my eyes go everywhere on the composition and they never stop finding new things within it. I'm not always a huge fan of covers like this but I appreciate the concept. The ability to use such a large amount of colors but keep everything balanced throughout is an impressive accomplishment. One part that I don't think is great is the neon mountain in the background. It has no purpose and brings too much attention to itself when the rest of the cover is far more muted in its color. Overall you'll have a fun time discovering everything the cover has to offer. 7/10
For more pop rock check out my review of Wolf Alice's Blue Weekend here
