The Wombats -Glitterbug

The Wombats
Glitterbug
2015

The Wombats seem to straddle that line between Pop and Indie unlike most things I have heard. At times their music can be clawingly sweet bubblegum pop but then switch into super dark themes and anthemic Indie Rock. The whole album is a mix of these two worlds; songs like "Pink Lemonade" and "Emoticons" are so abrasively pop that they are almost hard to listen to while songs like "Greek Tragedy" and "Curveballs" fall more into the Indie world with great use of synthesizers and interesting lyrics. It is really difficult to pin Glitterbug down into any sort of category and the album does suffer for it's lack of direction. It's quite jarring to hear something with so much potential fall into a jumbled mess.

It really though is not all bad. "Greek Tragedy" is a real standout on the record and other tracks that fall in line with that style of music do work quite well. It is just so hard to get over how sweet the whole thing is especially when the lyric tend to be sexual and a bit explicit at time. There really is something there in this album, but unfortunately it can't get past itself to be something truly great. Glitterbug is an example of a record with a couple good tracks then 10 others just thrown at the wall to see what sticks, which is not enough to make something special.

5 out of 10