The Wombats kick off the most exciting phase of their constantly evolving success story today with the announcement of their fifth studio album Fix Yourself, Not The World, due for release on January 7.
Alongside this, the indie heroes have revealed plans for a five-date headline UK arena tour in 2022 – including a massive headline show at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Thursday May 26.
Tickets for this 8,000-capacity Yorkshire coast show go on general sale at 9am on Friday August 20 via scarboroughopenairtheatre.com
UK ARENA TOUR DATES:
14 April 2022 – First Direct Arena, Leeds
15 April 2022 – The O2, London
16 April 2022 – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
18 April 2022 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
22 April 2022 – Mountford Hall, Liverpool
26 May 2022 – Open Air Theatre, Scarborough
The announcement comes accompanied by a brand new single ‘If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You’, which is BBC Radio 1’s Future Sounds Hottest Record In The World. Recording remotely over the past year from their respective homes, the band have been working hard to produce some of the most captivating, inventive and forward-thinking music of their career to date.
With frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy in Los Angeles, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen in Oslo and drummer Dan Haggis in London, they discussed each day’s plan via Zoom, then recorded separately, sending individual files to producers Jacknife Lee (U2, The Killers), Gabe Simon (Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey), Paul Meaney (Twenty One Pilots, Nothing But Thieves), Mark Crew (Bastille, Rag‘n’Bone Man) and Mike Crossey (The 1975, The War on Drugs, Yungblud) to mix into the finished tracks. “It was pure madness, to be honest,” explains Murph. See the eboy designed album artwork below.
“We’re so excited for people to hear this new album! We’ve explored new genres and pushed ourselves further than ever musically. It will always stand out for us in our memories from our other albums as we recorded it across three cities during lockdown, and we weren’t all in the same room at the same time!” says Dan Haggis.
Following the cathartic ‘Method To The Madness’, The Wombats’ new single ‘If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You’is an infectious electro-pop ode to obsessive devotion. Speaking about the track, Murph says “I noticed that 2020 and 2021 put some serious strain on interpersonal relationships, it felt like people around me were really struggling. For me, ‘If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You’ taps into all of that and asks the question… is it the circumstances putting undue stress on people? Or have the circumstances shed light on people’s incompatibility with one another?”
15 years and three top 5 UK albums into their career, The Wombats are pulling in a bigger audience than ever before.
The viral success of Oliver Nelson’s remix of their 2015 hit ‘Greek Tragedy’ on TikTok has enraptured a whole new generation of fans, a feat they’ve managed to continually repeat since their 2007 debut A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation. Used in over 600,000 videos (some of which have over 100 million views), the remix has rocketed to over 30 million streams, propelling the original to 120 million streams and sending it Gold in the US. It’s also helped them amass an extra 2.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify since just January; further illustration, if any were needed, of The Wombats’ ability to reach new generations of fans through the timeless power of their songwriting and lyrics alone.
With a summer ahead that includes second from top billings at Reading & Leeds Festival main stage and Neighbourhood Weekender, plus their biggest ever UK headline tourset for 2022, this is only the start of what’s to come as fans new and old gear up for the next exciting chapter from one of Britain’s most adored bands.