Tom Kinney talks to Dan Haggis of The Wombats about their new album and current tour.

Dan Haggis, one-third of The Wombats, is sat on a beach in Folkestone, as he recounts the “awesome” past few months that the band have had. After a summer playing festivals, “helping people go wild”, The Wombats are embarking on their first tour since the release of new album This Modern Glitch, and Dan reveals that after the “amazing” festival experience, “it’s nice to be back on a proper tour.”

This is the first real chance The Wombats have had to gauge their fan’s reaction to the new album, and Haggis is pleasantly surprised with what he’s seen so far. “People have really taken to the new album. Some of the new songs get a better reaction than the old ones.”  This love of the new among the fans is most evident, Dan reveals, when the band have played “Walking Disasters”, an album track not yet released as a single. This track has seen “the whole crowd singing along” every night of the tour, much to the surprise of The Wombats who have “changed its set position because of the reaction it got.”

The new album was originally scheduled for release late last year, but “loads of little things” delayed it until April. Haggis divulged that The Wombats had thought, after waiting so long already, “there’s no point putting something out if we’re not happy with it.” Having found the delayed release “really frustrating”, are The Wombats happy with the finished record? “Yeah 99%. No actually, probably less than that.” Dan explained this small percentage of dis-satisfaction was nothing to do with any of the songs, but because “as a band, you’re always trying to better yourselves, make new and exciting things. There are always going to be things you think you could have done better.”

This Modern Glitch sees The Wombats introduce a much more synthy element to their sound, and Haggis revealed this added to the delay between albums. It was something they had never used before, and so they “had a lot of time playing around with the synths, jamming with different sounds, getting used to using them.”

Having played A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation for over four years, you could imagine The Wombats’ enthusiasm on some early tracks might fade. “No, not at all”, Dan states, with real energy in his voice,  before explaining that on every track they play live they think “we love this one”. He believes this is largely down to “changing set-lists and playing in new countries with new, different people watching.”

This is a world tour for The Wombats, and the day after they finish their UK dates they fly to Australia, before playing some “smaller places off the beaten track” in the US. From there they play the rest of Europe before they end up “back in Liverpool” (unfortunately Dan did not sing this line).

You can imagine that having the tag of being from Liverpool’s historically influential music scene might be a slight burden for The Wombats, but Dan quashes this suggestion, describing how it “helps them have a sense of a musical place” among fans, and works especially well in Japan and America.

With so many different places to stop off on the tour, it’s great to hear the excitement The Wombats have for their trip to Scotland; the only place they’ve “been covered with pints of beer on stage”. Haggis is looking forward to performing in a country “with this slight extra bit of wildness to it.”

Tom Kinney