Following the announcement of their headline European tour in May 2022, indie heroes The Wombats today unveil ‘Ready For The High’, the latest offering from their forthcoming fifth studio album Fix Yourself, Not The World. A sultry buzz rock note-to-self to accept the good times now they’re here, the track will be accompanied by a video shot while the band were together in the UK earlier this month, which captures the raw live energy they recently brought to the main stages of Reading and Leeds Festival and Neighbourhood Weekender. The video premieres on The Wombats’ Youtube at 6pm BST today. The band this week added extra dates at Glasgow’s Barrowlands and Liverpool’s Mountford Hall to keep up with the demand for their 2022 UK tour.
About the track, frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy comments: ‘’Ready for the High’ is a 90’s inspired track that I was excited to toss a load of trumpets into. The song is about being engulfed in a bad place, but rather than accepting this as immutable, acknowledging that it is only temporary and that better times are closer than they (currently) appear.”
‘Ready For The High’ follows the single ‘If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You’, an infectious electro-pop ode to obsessive devotion, which premiered on BBC Radio 1 ‘Future Sounds’ with Yungblud and has already racked up more than 3M streams and counting on Spotify, spent a second week on the BBC Radio 1 C-List and was Greg James’ Breakfast Show‘s ‘Tune Of The Week’.
Recording remotely over the past year from their respective homes, the band have been working hard to produce some of the most captivating, inventive and forward-thinking music of their career to date. With frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy in Los Angeles, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen in Oslo and drummer Dan Haggis in London, they discussed each day’s plan via Zoom, then recorded separately, sending individual files to producers Jacknife Lee (U2, The Killers), Gabe Simon (Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey), Paul Meaney (Twenty One Pilots, Nothing But Thieves), Mark Crew (Bastille, Rag‘n’Bone Man) and Mike Crossey (The 1975, The War on Drugs, Yungblud) to mix into the finished tracks. “It was pure madness, to be honest,” explains Murph.
The viral success of Oliver Nelson’s remix of their 2015 hit ‘Greek Tragedy’ on TikTok has enraptured a whole new generation of fans, a feat they’ve managed to continually repeat since their 2007 debut A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation. Used in over 600,000 videos (some of which have over 100 million views), the remix has rocketed to over 30 million streams, propelling the original to 120 million streams and sending it Gold in the US. It’s helped the band surpass 1.5 billion worldwide streams, also amassing an extra 2.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify since just January; further illustration, if any were needed, of The Wombats’ ability to reach new generations of fans through the timeless power of their songwriting and lyrics alone.
With their biggest ever UK headline tour set for 2022, including a landmark show at London’s The O2 and two sold-out nights at Mountford Hall Liverpool, and their fifth studio album ‘Fix Yourself, Not The World’, due for release on 7th January 2022 via AWAL, this is only the start of what’s to come as fans new and old gear up for the next exciting chapter from one of Britain’s most adored bands.
Fix Yourself, Not The World tracklist:
1. Flip Me Upside Down
2. This Car Drives All By Itself
3. If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You
4. Ready For The High
5. Method to the Madness
6. People Don’t Change People, Time Does
7. Everything I Love Is Going To Die
8. Work Is Easy, Life Is Hard
9. Wildfire
10. Don’t Poke The Bear
11. Worry
12. Fix Yourself, Then The World (Reach Beyond Your Fingers)
UK Arena Tour Dates:
14 April 2022 – First Direct Arena, Leeds
15 April 2022 – The O2, London
16 April 2022 – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
18 April 2022 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow (SOLD OUT)
19 April 2022 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
21 April 2022 – Mountford Hall, Liverpool
22 April 2022 – Mountford Hall, Liverpool (SOLD OUT)
23 April 2022 – Mountford Hall, Liverpool (SOLD OUT)
26 May 2022 – Open Air Theatre, Scarborough
European Tour Dates:
29 April 2022 – La Machine Du Moulin Rouge, Paris (France)
01 May 2022 – Carlswerk Victoria, Cologne (Germany)
02 May 2022 – Übel & Gefährlich, Hamburg (Germany)
04 May 2022 – Slaktkyrkan, Stockholm (Sweden)
05 May 2022 – Rockefeller Music Hall, Oslo (Norway)
06 May 2022 – DR Koncerthuset, Copenhagen (Denmark)
07 May 2022 – Huxley’s Neue Welt, Berlin (Germany)
09 May 2022 – Gasometer, Vienna (Austria)
10 May 2022 – Backstage Werk, Munich (Germany)
12 May 2022 – Estragon, Bologna (Italy)
13 May 2022 – Fabrique, Milan (Italy)
14 May 2022 – Komplex 457, Zurich (Switzerland)
16 May 2022 – De Roma, Antwerp (Belgium)
17 May 2022 – Paradiso, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
18 May 2022 – De Oosterpoort, Groningen (Netherlands)
19 May 2022 – TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht (Netherlands)