“…when you actually play the songs in a room, you see the people faces and reactions. That’s when it all kind of comes together and you’re like “okay, cool, this is amazing”. You can really see people getting into it and that’s one of the best parts of being a musician.”

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Liverpool indie pop trio The Wombats are veterans to the music industry. Through explosive singles like “Moving To New York”, “Let’s Dance To Joy Division” and “Greek Tragedy”, the band have found themselves selling out iconic venues around the world from two nights at the Sydney Opera House to London’s Brixton Academy.

Now, with their brand new album Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life on the horizon, I was fortunate enough to speak with drummer Dan Haggis about the new musical direction The Wombats are embarking on, the kooky music video for single “Cheetah Tongue” and when we can expect to see the British-bred trio back in Australia.

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So first of all, the new album is just incredible. I got to listen to it recently to prepare for the interview and the new songs are insane!

Aw, thank you! That’s good to hear!

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Do you or any of the other guys have any personal favourites off the album?

I think, my two favourites are probably “Cheetah Tongue” and “I Don’t Know Why I Like You, But I Do”, the last song on the album. Yeah, definitely those two.

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I love “I Don’t Know Why I Like You, But I Do” as well, easily my favourite off the album.

Oh, that’s so cool to hear! In fact, it was kind of the first song we made with all three of us together in Oslo for this album. And it was one of those songs that just appears and two days later, we were like “Oh fuck, it’s finished. Amazing!”. It feels more like a melancholy, dreamy sort of vibe than we’ve had before. I feel like it’s one of the stand out ones for me as well.

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Speaking of writing and recording, this new album was very unique in that the band wasn’t together for most of the writing process. Can you tell me a bit more about how those long distance writing sessions affected the album and the three of you as a band?

I guess it’s a little bit unusual and I mean, the internet obviously makes everything a lot easier in regards to that so it was easier to share songs and work on things in your own time. We had done it a bit with Glitterbug as well, so it wasn’t too weird. But, to be honest, we’d have a bunch of songs that Murph would send over and then me and Tord would get into the parts, get the feeling of it and we had booked in a bunch of writing sessions in Oslo because you really do need to be together and actually be in the same room jamming and messing around with ideas and feed off each other.

We did a bunch of songs like that and then, we’d take some of the songs that Murph had already done and work them into the context. If there were any problem sections, we could build things up again. We fairly quickly got to a point where we knew what the songs were gonna be for the album and how they were going to work. We were just very conscious in that we didn’t want to take as long in this album as we had in the last couple so it was a bit more effective for us in that sense.

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You guys decided to go into a darker, more mature direction than your previous album Glitterbug. What inspired the band to go in this kind of direction?

I think we always try or have tried to do slightly different sounding albums as we’ve gone along and with this album, especially Murph, whenever we were working on stuff, we started thinking it was cool to not use as many synths, for example. We wanted to strip it back down to guitar, bass, drums and vocals and make sure that the songs work just with that as the basis. And obviously, if there’s any other little flourishes and any weird psychedelic bits, then of course we can mess along with other things. But in general, that was the starting point. We kinda had it as a rule in place like a box with work in without having too many options, which is quite fun actually.

Like, for example, when we got to “I Don’t Know Why I Like You, But I Do”, instead of having a little section that goes off in a different direction with synths, it was more like “Let’s do a big ‘fuck off’ riff here”. You end approaching things in a different way and finding other ways to make a section of the song develop to take you on a different journey. It was really fun.

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That’s really cool to hear! Do you think the fans have been accommodating to the new sound so far?

Yeah, the reaction’s been amazing. I think of all the songs we’ve released, “Turn” is probably the closest sounding to Glitterbug. It’s got a lot of synth and it’s a bit more electronic feeling, whereas I think “Cheetah Tongue” probably represents the new album as a whole. But the people’s reaction so far has been so good. Like, we’ve been on tour in the US for the best part of a month now and all the people here are singing along to the three new songs, even though ”Cheetah Tongue” has only ben out for like a week, it’s been so nice to see. And yeah, you can see comments online and all the rest of it and you get a sense of the feedback but when you actually play the songs in a room you see the people faces and reactions, that’s when it all kind of comes together and you’re like “okay, cool, this is amazing”. You can really see people getting into it and that’s one of the best parts of being a musician.

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Are you excited for see the fans react to the rest of the album on release day?

Yeah, I can’t wait! It’s gonna be fun to see. Even talking to you and hearing that the last song on the album is your favourite is so cool to hear.

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Along with the music, the music videos for the new album have progressively gotten darker and immensely creative as well. How did the ideas for the new music videos come about?

So, Finn is the guy who directed our music video for “Greek Tragedy”, which is one of our favourite videos we’ve ever done. We really wanted to work with him again but with the last album, life got in the way and we couldn’t end up do any more with him. When we starting planning this album, he was the first person we hit up and we said “Finn, if you’re up for it, we’d love for you to do all the videos for this album so start having a think” and he came back with idea for “Lemon To A Knife Fight”. We were like, “Yeah, this is mental but sounds great, go for it”. And it was the same with the “Cheetah Tongue” video; when we saw his idea, we were just like, “Where do you come up with these idea? Like, how have you sorted loads of dancing grannies who are then weightlifting their husbands? Like this is just, it’s awesome”.

I mean, in general, we’ve always liked having more original, interesting songs or videos so on stage, we can have those surreal moments. Like the other day in LA, the whole crowd screamed the word ‘Rabbit’ as loud as possible, which I’m pretty sure that’s a first, but then Murph got them to scream ‘Haemorrhoids’ the next city after that. But moments like that where people are just thinking “What the hell is going on?”, we really like that aspect of whatever art or medium is going on. And Finn is definitely the perfect director for us because he loves that side of things as well.

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I know it’s been a while since the release of the music video “Greek Tragedy”, what was it like to work with Finn again since then?

Yeah, it’s been great. With the “Cheetah Tongue” video, we weren’t really in it apart from filming the TV static, which we did back stage at a show in Boston and sent it to him. So aside from that, he pretty much took care of everything. And then with “Lemon To A Knife Fight”, we went over to Ireland and did two hours of filming for the opening scene. Finn’s great, like it’s so easy to work with him. When you trust someone like Finn, you know that he’s gonna pull it off and he’s gonna have a cool idea. And it’s great because we know we’re in safe hands.

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The only single from the new album that hasn’t gotten a music video is ‘Turn’. Is that something we’ll be seeing in the near future?

Yeah.

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Definitely?

Yeah! We’re hoping Finn’s gonna do it, but because he was doing the “Cheetah Tongue” video, he hasn’t had time to do one for “Turn” but I’m pretty much 100% sure it’s happening. So, we’re just waiting for him to come up with a concept and then, film it.

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Usually, a new album means lots of touring. How excited to start playing the unreleased songs from Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life to fans?

We’ve actually started playing some new songs like “Black Flamingo” live, which has been lots of fun. We’ve also been practising “Lethal Combination” and “I Don’t Know Why I Like You, But I Do” in soundcheck recently as well, which has been really good so we got a few more we need to, basically [laughs]. We have to figure out how to sing and play the songs at the same time in a live setting because when we were recording, we don’t really think that far into it. So yeah, we got a few more soundcheck left in America to figure that out but I can’t wait to start playing them. Especially once the album is out and everyone’s actually had time to listen to the songs and digest them and hopefully have some memories attached to them, it’s gonna be good. And we can’t wait to come back to Australia as well.

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Speaking of coming back to Australia, is there any plans in the future for The Wombats to come back to Australia in support of the new album?

Yes, there are. I don’t know what the situation is with announcing stuff at the moment but we are definitely coming back this year within the next 9 months. I’m sure they’ll be an announcement at some point, but yeah, we’re definitely coming back.

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Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life Out February 9 via Warner Music Australia

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