Thursday night at The Pageant The Wombats retured to play their largest crowd yet in St. Louis. The band is on tour for their upcoming release ‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’ (out February 9th).
I was a little disappointed with the size of the crowd when I showed up to the Pageant. Plenty of space was still available in the pit and if you felt like sitting you could easily find one.
Nation of Language opened the night. Lead vocalist Ian Devaney reminded me a bit of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis on stage by the way he moved and danced around on stage. If you closed your eyes you could almost feel like you were transported to Manchester, England during the post punk/new wave hay day of the 80’s.
Electronic indie pop band courtship. were up next. L.A. duo of Micah Gordon and Eli Hirsch were supported by a bassist and drummer. Courtship played a surprise cover toward the end of their set — “Hey Ya!” by OutKast.
By the time the Wombats took the stage The Pageant had finally filled up to a decent level. The band opened with ‘Cheetah Tongue’, the opening song on their new album ‘Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life’. It didn’t take long for fans to start singing out their lyrics and pumping their fists. Guitarist, bassist and keyboardist Tord Overland Knudsen jumped around sage like Tigger during just about every song. Before playing ‘Pink Lemonade’ frontman Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy said “I went to Barcelona for a week and I’d just sit in a square and get drunk” and that’s how he came up with the song. Several times over the night the band said that the crowd sounded like a pack of coyotes whenever they cheered at the start of a song or end of a song. The Wombats closed their set with ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ and the crowd went crazy dancing and singing along.The band returned for a three song encore “Turn”, “Tokyo”, and “Greek Tragedy”.
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