Manchester

The Wombats at AO Arena, Manchester – the noughties indie disco never REALLY died

Thank god the haircuts did though.

Daisy Jackson - 23rd March 2025

If at some point in your life you sported an extreme side-swept fringe, knee-high socks, and a battered leather jacket you scoured the vintage shops for for months, you know what it means to have a noughties indie disco come to town – and that indie disco is courtesy of one of the genre’s greats, The Wombats.

The Liverpool three-piece were at the AO Arena in Manchester on Saturday evening, in support of their sixth studio album Oh! The Ocean.

The hair’s calmed down a lot (they were the MASTERS of whipping their ‘do all the way back from the crown of their head to their eyebrows) but the energy of The Wombats has done the opposite.

For a relatively chill indie band they’ve got a reputation for causing widespread mosh pits, and Manchester delivers them in spades.

It’s not just your regular elbow-to-the-face, lose-your-mates-for-a-bit, risk-your-ribcage moshpits either. At one point hundreds of people sit on the floor and pretend to row a giant, grimy boat. At another point there’s a confusing moment where three pits all congregate and everyone stares at each other for a split second before letting loose again.

They’ve got a lot of music to get through in the two decades they’ve been together, but it’s the debut stuff that has a weird effect on all the 30-somethings in the crowd.

Kill The Director, Moving to New York and Let’s Dance to Joy Division are all the sort of songs that transcend grimy basement nightclub all the way to the UK’s best arena with the same frenetic energy.

The Wombats have also pulled together one of the strongest support line-ups seen in recent years, which in turn pulls in one of the busiest standing sections I’ve ever seen, from the minute the doors open.

First is Red Rum Club, our pals from across the way in Liverpool, with their signature indie sound elevated by trumpet player Joe the Blow.

Then it’s over to local lads Everything Everything, in their matching acid-washed denim and art rock hits.

As for The Wombats – it’s not every artist who can get the goosebumps going within the first two songs – but chucking in Moving To New York as your second song will do just that.

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Say what you want about the scousers but their comedic timing is unmatched too, whether it’s ribbing each other on stage or stressing that the lyrics of their song are ‘getting college girl drunk, not college girls drunk – a very important difference’.

There are, including vocals, eight instruments between three of them. Most would summon some sessions musicians, but not The Wombats.

They’re rock solid as a trio, but the whole show is carried along by their urge for playfulness – from the stage invasion by wombat mascots carrying confetti cannons, to dropping giant colourful balloons from the sky as they wrap up the night with Greek Tragedy.

There’s something pretty memorable about the sight of people determinedly carrying a gigantic pink balloon overhead onto the tram.

Long live indie disco.

Featured image: Joshua Fairbrother