The Wombats Fix Yourself, Not the World

Landfill indie: a snobbish dismissal of earnest, hard-working indie bands or a perfect description for the charmless, utterly beige guitar music that emerged from Britain in the mid-2000s? I’ll spare you the suspense—I’m in the latter camp. It truly was the worst of times. Some of the key protagonists are still earning a living from music today, with Liverpool’s The Wombats the latest to emerge from this putrid cesspit with a new release. Like a particularly stubborn block of plastic, The Wombats seem doomed to flop around aimlessly for eternity, occupying mid-afternoon festival slots and presumably asking middle-aged parents to put their hands in the air and breathe in the rank nostalgia. Make no mistake, they are a mid-noughties problem that will continue to haunt subsequent generations—achieving a level of success that is entirely inexplicable given how easy it is to access millions of far superior songs. There is no excuse for accepting this level of mediocrity, and there is no fix that will remedy a problem like The Wombats.