The Wombats release extended edition of ‘Oh! The Ocean’
The expanded ‘deluxe’ version of the band’s latest album sees four wondrous new tracks from the original album sessions and beyond.
Photo: Joshua Fairbrother
Indie rock favourites The Wombats have dropped an extended version of their latest studio album, Oh! The Ocean, originally released in February this year. Their sixth release prompted a huge UK arena tour, which has now entered the second leg. The initial release was a bold new era in The Wombats’ journey, combining nostalgic indie rock of the early noughties with a newer, fresher sound.
With this extended release, the album, which got to number four on the Official Albums Chart, sounds brand new all over again. It’s like adding widescreen to a 1.19:1 blockbuster; the four tracks here complement and inform the standard twelve-track set. Love You Like A Rainbow, the focus track from the expanded edition, is as good as anything on Oh! The Ocean, so thank God the boys were wise enough to get it out there. Equally, Holy Sugar is a shot of indie rock adrenaline, channelling the best of early and latter-day Wombats, with a sleazy guitar sound.
The other two new additions — Different Next Time and X-Rated — are offerings of reflective indie pop (“When you were reading Dracula in school / I was starting fights”) and 2000s rock, respectively, akin to Blood On The Hospital Floor and Can’t Say No from the original album.
This release feels like a genuinely worthy addition to the indie scene catalogue. The four additional compositions here aren’t half-baked outtakes only fanatics will go crazy for. They’re well-crafted, infectious rockers that, alongside the original album, prove the boys from Liverpool can still play something vital and new — eighteen years on from the release of their debut, A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation.
Oh! The Ocean is out now via AWAL.