With the release of 2007’s A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, UK-based indie vanguards The Wombats cemented themselves as the premiere arbiters of a quintessentially garage brand of pop music.
The band combined simple songwriting that harkened back to the days of the British Invasion with a punky edge evidenced in undeniably catchy songs like ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’, ‘Backfire at the Disco’, and ‘Kill the Director’.
Now, the band are gearing up for the release of Glitterbug, their follow-up to 2011’s chart-scaling This Modern Glitch, which comes out this Friday, 10th April. To uncover the inspirations behind the band’s inimitable sound, we spoke to bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen.
Green Day – Dookie
To be honest, there were quite a few albums, probably like three albums, that made me want to be in a band. It was Green Day’s Dookie, Weezer’s Blue Album, and Offspring’s Smash. All of those bands came out around ’94, I think.
The music was really easy to play, whereas the music I liked before was a lot more technical, with a lot more guitar solos, back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It was like, ‘Okay, it’s possible to play this stuff.’ So I started to learn some of the riffs and that’s how I ended up playing guitar and bass and that kind of stuff.
Motorpsycho – Timothy’s Monster
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I think there’s a few albums that defined my teen years, but the album that really made me experiment and pushed the whole creative process to the next level for me at that stage, when I started playing in a band, was Motorpsycho, this Norwegian band, who you probably haven’t heard about [laughs].
They were kind of seen as like this Norwegian version of Sonic Youth. They had like 10-minute long, epic songs, or it could just be a two-and-a-half-minute pop song. They were quite noisy and experimental. They were a trio, so the bass player’s sound was quite distorted and that’s something I picked up on and I kind of nicked his sound.
Foo Fighters – The Colour and the Shape
Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape, is an album I’ve definitely overplayed. I think it was just how the sound is so aggressive and dirty in many ways, it’s quite an edgy album. But still, if you strip all the guitars and the growly voice, the songs are really good pop songs.
I think it’s the mixture of really solid songwriting, with a really edgy package around it. I guess The Blue Album is similar in that way. It’s that kind of Beatles vibe of writing passed through this garage sound and that really appealed to me.
Radiohead – The Bends
I think one of the bands that made all of us in The Wombats bond in the beginning was Radiohead. You know, The Bends and Kid A, all that kind of stuff. I guess Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins were other groups that we all shared a love for.
I don’t think they necessarily impacted the way we play, though. We listen to quite a lot of different music to what we actually sound like and I think that’s a good way to go about it. You pick up things from other styles and you make it your own some way.
Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
When we went into record this new album, we were listening to I guess a lot more electronic music. I guess when we started writing the third album, we wanted to do some more guitar-y sounding stuff, but we pretty quickly got bored of that.
I guess it’s just more fun playing around with synths, you can make such different sounds and it can trigger different ideas, playing an instrument you’re not familiar with. We were listening to a lot of Todd Terje, I absolutely love that album. A lot of Passion Pit as well, that kind of edgy synth-pop. The latest CHVRCHES album I like a lot as well.
Cornelius – Fantasma
We were touring in Japan and I got introduced to this Japanese artist called Cornelius. Basically, he released this album called Fantasma and it’s one of the craziest albums I’ve ever heard. He speaks in Japanese throughout a lot of it, with maybe the odd line in English, but he’s sort of like the Japanese version of Beck, maybe.
You have to listen to the album from start to finish, but there’s mental sections. It goes from electronic to grungy. It’s one of those really inspiring albums that I can listen to if I’m running a bit dry and have no inspiration. You put that on and you’re ready to write another song.
The Wombats will follow their Top 2 album ‘This Modern Glitch’ with the release of their third full-length ‘Glitterbug’ this Friday, 10th April – pre-order it on iTunes now.
