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The Wombats: Lyrical Style and Juxtaposition

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The Wombats: Lyrical Style and Juxtaposition

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The Wombats have been my favourite listening music for almost 3 years now, there is so much about this band that I love, and that influences me.
After careful consideration, I have isolated a fundamental aspect of their music that has shaped the values I hold as a producer and music listener.
The band addresses serious issues like depression, anxiety and abusive relationships in their lyrics with an approach that is as humorous and clever as it is depressing. I would go so far as to call them wordsmiths!
Matthew Murphy spoke about their album 'This Modern Glitch' in a video interview, saying "Lyrically [the songs] can be quite melancholy but also quite humorous" (FaceCulture, 2010. 01:30) and "Slightly more angst driven rather than fun" (FaceCulture, 2010. 02:40).
Since listening to their music, the art in lyrics has risen highly in my esteem, and I strongly aspire to communicate as well through my own productions.

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In an interview with Paul Baskerville, lead singer Matthew Murphy gives credit to the band's hometown of Liverpool, describing the music scene as incredibly supportive. "It is part of our identity, if it wasn't for Liverpool we wouldn't be musicians" (Cromwell The Wombat, 2015. 04:45)

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Excitement! (Emotional Drama and Travel)

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Excitement! (Emotional Drama and Travel)

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Matthew Murphy (lead singer and songwriter) discussed how he gets his "most inspirational ideas" from the drama and excitement of entering or leaving a relationship. (FaceCulture, 2015, 05:45).
He adds "I need to be constantly moving to feel inspired" (FaceCulture, 2015, 06:35).
This is an interesting link to my own journey, as I have found this to be the case for me too. Travel and emotional drama are the primary sources of my musical inspiration.

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Other Bands: Silverchair and Foo Fighters 

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Other Bands: Silverchair and Foo Fighters 

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In a video interview with The AU Review (2015), bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen, and drummer Dan Haggis talk about the inspiration they got from the music they grew up with.
In this interview they listed The Foo Fighters, Greenday, and Silverchair among others. Tord Øverland Knudsen said "Silverchair was huge for me and a lot of Norwegians" (The AU Review, 00:35).
It is interesting to hear this, because I hadn't considered that perhaps The Wombats have Australian influences; I would be fascinated to find out how Australian and UK music might interact and influence each other but unfortunately they only briefly touch on these influences in this interview.

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An NME article quotes lead singer Matthew Murphy speaking about his addiction to anti-depressant medication (Goodwyn, 2011).

As NME is a magazine, and not a verifiable source, this evidence is inconclusive. However lyrics from their song ‘Anti-D’ "Please allow me to be your anti-depressant, I too am prescribed this freely as any decongestant” (The Wombats, 01:23) and their newly released song ‘Worry’ suggest that depression and anxiety have influenced their music lyrically.

In a video interview, Matthew Murphy spoke about their album 'This Modern Glitch’, saying "Lyrically [the songs] can be quite melancholy but also quite humorous" (FaceCulture, 2010. 01:30) and "Slightly more angst driven rather than fun" (FaceCulture, 2010. 02:40).

When this evidence is combined, I can say that anxiety and depression are topics that have influenced the lyrics and music that the band produces.

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When discussing the song 'Don't Dream It's Over" Tim Finn, singer/songwriter of Crowded House states he likes to write songs that aren't too rigid in their meaning, and are open to the interpretation of the listener (Professor of Rock, 2020).
This value may have shaped many other songs and albums by the group, and it is interesting to note that this value is something I notice and appreciate in the lyrics of The Wombats too.

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The audible influence of The Beatles on songs like "Into Temptation" was discussed in the book by Chris Bourke (2014), where Tim Finn talks about The Beetles being the reason he pursued music.
It could be inferred that part of this influence included The Beatles' use of vocal harmony, linking The Beatles to the influence of harmony I have from Crowded House. Unfortunately there was no in-depth discussion of this in the book cited above, so I can only suggest that this may have been the case.

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Several of their longer songs had jazz influence, with time signature and tempo changes and complicated song structure (Bourke, 2014). No further details about this could be found in credible sources, but I never would have guessed this by myself and after all this research into the three bands, I think a database of peer-reviewed articles that discuss the influences of a band would be great resource!

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Crowded house was a favourite of my family and was played a LOT while I was growing up. I was particularly entranced by the harmonies, the way the voices interact and add depth and strength to the message of the song, and enjoyed creating my own too.
There is something special about combining the most personal instrument we all have (our voices) with another person's.
I believe listening to Crowded House is where my love of singing in harmony with other people started, and although I haven't produced songs with many layers of harmony yet, I would really like to.

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James Bay 'Clocks Go Forward' - Emotive Instrumentation

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James Bay 'Clocks Go Forward' - Emotive Instrumentation

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'Clocks Go Forward' is a beautiful acoustic song written and performed by James Bay before his fame took grew.
It was the guitar riff in the intro that first grabbed me, and the vocals that kept me.
The song provoked the most beautiful and fragile emotions, and it showed me for the first time how effectively emotion could be expressed in simple, well composed songs. The possibility that I could learn to do this was the start of my music journey that would eventually lead me to study at SAE in a roundabout fashion, and is therefore partly why I am here, investigating my influences.

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"Fleetwood Mac is just fantastic and they inspire everything I do" (London, 2020. 15:50). This was the only mention of this influence that I could find from a credible source.
I hear many similarities between Crowded House and Fleetwood Mac in style, song topic, and genre, and I think it is interesting that James Bay and myself have such comparable influences in our music.

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Who/what influences me?

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In an interview of James Bay, he mentions that the song 'Layla' by Derek and the Dominos was what inspired him to learn to play guitar.
"I heard it, loved it and in my mind I said 'I have to do it' "(Bay, J. 2016).
He later explains that it was the guitar riff that grabbed him, which is a similar experience to my own when listening to his song 'Clocks Go Forward'

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As a child, James Bay was exposed to "older stuff" [music] that his parents played through the radio in his home. This included artists like The Rolling Stones, Elton John and Van Morrison
(Bay, 2016)
No further explanation of why or in what way these artists influenced him could be found, so I suggest that this music shaped his early music likes and dislikes, which may have influenced the musical direction he chose as an artist in later life.