The Wombats @ Manchester Apollo, Thursday 29th May 2008

This gig will be the last of The Wombat’s current UK tour. We know this because the band’s front man, Matthew Murphy tells us repeatedly throughout the set. Hard to know whether this disclosure is supposed to encourage the audience to give that bit more in return – you know, in recognition of all the band’s hard work over the course of a month; or whether it’s an insecure olive branch for anybody potentially not about to be blown away by proceedings. Whatever, first up is the A capella ‘Tales Of Girls, Boys & Marsupials’, followed closely by a lively ‘Kill The Director’. There’s a fast-paced rummage through some crowd-pleasing album tracks like ‘School Uniforms’ and ‘Party In A Forest (Where’s Laura)’; all jagged pop edges bouncing off the glassy veneer of their ‘80s LO-FI ‘laser’ show (some green fluorescent tubes, essentially). Then Murphy’s off, telling us all about how emotional this last gig of the UK tour is, and as if to prove the extent of their emotional turmoil, The Wombats then crank out the panto rock ‘Here Comes The Anxiety’. Mercifully, it’s not long before the largely teenybopper audience gets what it came for came for. ‘Moving to New York’ is brilliantly executed, full of the arch pop bite the band seems to be establishing as its trademark: and what’s more, this audience - they’re good kids - so when Murphy tells them / threatens them they’d better dance – they dance. As ‘Patricia The Stripper’ nears its last, Murphy makes the between-song gaff, telling the audience about an amazing night he’d had watching Interpol at this venue. Not wise to put a great band in people’s heads only seconds before launching into the Oom-pah Lederhosen awfulness of ‘Little Miss Pipedream’. The set closes with a blistering ‘Lets Dance to Joy Division’, after which the arrival of an 8ft inflatable Wombat (doing the Pink Floyd thing, suspended above the crowd) keeps the crowd entertained in the band’s absence. This welcome addition stays in place for the encore of ‘My First wedding’ and ‘Backfire at The Disco’, and then it’s all over: Mums & Dads start arriving at the back, eager to whisk their young wombats off home for some WKD and E4.

It’s not a bad night’s work for The Wombats: their handful of singles and a few decent album tracks are exciting enough, and it’s an adrenalized performance. They need more great songs, but as we’re still on album one(ish), we shouldn’t hold this against them. What does let them down, though, is the fact that on this evidence, on this night, their front man has virtually no stage presence. And when said front man insists on an inordinate amount of between-song banter, this can really start to grate. Maybe earlier on in the tour it wasn’t a problem.

Their festival tour starts next week.