The Wombats Reveal New Album 'Oh! The Ocean'

The Wombats have unveiled their newest studio album, Oh! The Ocean, via AWAL. In support of the LP, The Wombats will be embarking on a massive UK & European Tour next month that sees them play their biggest headline shows to date. Listen to the album and check out the tour dates below.

Two years since scoring their debut UK #1 album with Fix Yourself Not The World, The Wombats are back and bigger than ever. Oh! The Ocean trembles with the confessional emotional honesty that makes the Liverpool band's music as cathartic and relatable as it is catchy and playful, to their continuously growing young fanbase. Their recent singles have received large support from fans, with “Sorry I’m Late, I didn’t Want To Come” being a Radio 1 playlist track in The UK. 

The three-piece took 50 new songs to Echo Park, LA, in July 2024 for six weeks of sessions with new producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Wallows, Death Cab for Cutie) to create their most sonically adventurous album yet. The title is inspired by a revelatory trip to the beach Murph took on a family holiday. 

Speaking on the experience, Murph says: “I’ve been to many beaches and seas and coasts over the years but for some reason it felt like the first time I had ever seen it and was truly present. There was this revelation that I had been living a life caught up in my own head, or in some kind of racing helmet or with blinkers on. It was really a potent experience. I felt like I saw everything new for the first time, and was aware that I had been so selfish to not take in how crazy the world and life is. I’d been caught up in my own BS for way too long. 

The album offers up some internal questions like: why are my head and body disconnected all the time? Why am I incapable at times of seeing any form of beauty in the world or in others? Why do I expect the world to conform to my will? Why do I never stop and smell the flowers? How am I conscious? That’s why I called album 6 ‘Oh! The Ocean.’

Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-‘00s indie rock scene with 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, Murph, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen and drummer Dan Haggis have maintained an incredible upward momentum. 2011’s electro-flecked second album This Modern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars; 2015’s third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation, with ‘Greek Tragedy’ a viral hit several times over. By 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life they'd stepped up to arenas and 2022’s Fix Yourself, Not the World consolidated their unstoppable rise with the band’s first Number One album, seeing them reach over 2.5 billion streams. Headline shows at Crystal Palace and The O2 followed amid the band’s biggest touring cycle so far, taking in arenas across the globe and culminating at Reading 2024, where the band headlined a rammed Radio One tent overspilling with crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain their core audience twenty years into their career.

With Murph now feeling the benefits of his fresh perspective, Oh! The Ocean represents a line in the sand from which The Wombats are sprinting onwards into a mature new phase.

The Wombats - UK Tour Dates

March 18 - Motorpoint Arena - Nottingham

March 19 - The O2 - London

March 21 - Utilita Arena - Cardiff

March 22 - AO Arena - Manchester

March 23 - Connexin Live - Hull

March 25 - OVO Hydro - Glasgow

March 26 - First Direct Arena - Leeds

June 19 - Pier Head - Liverpool

The Wombats - EU Tour Dates

March 28 - Le Trabendo - Paris, France

March 30 - 013 Tilburg - Tilburg, Netherlands

March 31 - Paradiso - Amsterdam, Netherlands

April 1 - E-Werk - Cologne, Germany

April 3 - Theaterfabrik - Munich, Germany

April 4 - Komplex 457 - Zurich, Switzerland

April 5 - Archa + - Prague, Czech Republic

April 7 - Columbiahalle - Berlin, Germany

April 8 - Jovel Music Hall - Munster, Germany

April 10 - Rockefeller Music Hall - Oslo, Norway

April 11 - Pumpehuset - Copenhagen, Denmark

April 12 - Vasateatern - Stockholm, Sweden

April 15 - Den Atelier - Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

April 16 - Botanique - Brussels, Belgium

Photo Credit: Julia Friedland-Godfrey

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