Staring out to sea, Matthew 'Murph' Murphy seemed tosee himself for the first time. He'd found himself down on the beach after 'afucking terrible morning' on holiday with his family earlier this summer, trulytaking in the enormity of his surroundings: nature's unceasing ebb and flow,its timelessness and tranquility.

He had, right there, what he now calls a'mushroom-esque spiritual experience'. 'It was a moment of complete awe, butalso a shock,' he recalls. 'There was this revelation that I had been living alife caught up in my own head, or in some kind of racing helmet or withblinkers on. It was really a potent experience. I felt like I saw everythingnew for the first time, and was aware that I had been so selfish to not take inhow crazy the world and life is. I'd been caught up in my own BS for way toolong.' He found himself asking difficult questions. 'Why are my head and bodydisconnected all the time? Why am I incapable at times of seeing any form ofbeauty in the world or in others? Why do I expect the world to conform to mywill? Why do I never stop and smell the flowers?'

The album that follows - Oh! The Ocean, The Wombats' sixth, and their most sonicallyadventurous and superbly melodic yet - sets about trying to answer them. Itssophisticated, ahead-of-the-curve grooves (the richness of Death Cab for Cutiecombined with the adventuring mindset of St Vincent and Tame Impala) stilltremble with the sort of confessional emotional honesty that has made theLiverpool band's music as cathartic and relatable to their growing youngfanbase as it is catchy and playful. From behind the band's deceptively cuddlyfaçade, Murph has sung openly about his anxiety, depression, marital issues andaddictions (he's now 'sober as hell'); here, he lays bare his socialdiscomfort, internal strife, compulsive behaviours and the dilemmas and tribulationsof life in his adopted Los Angeles. But, like this year's second album fromMurph's side-project Love Fame Tragedy, LifeIs a Killer, there's also a sense of progress towards confronting,accepting and coping with his issues.

Success, after all, can play havoc with the troubledmind. Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-'00s indie rock scenewith 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss& Desperation and its hit singles 'Let's Dance to Joy Division','Moving to New York' and 'Kill the Director', Murph, bassist Tord ØverlandKnudsen and drummer Dan Haggis have maintained an incredible upward momentum.2011's electro-flecked second album ThisModern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars; 2015's third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation, with 'GreekTragedy' a viral hit several times over. By 2018's Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life they'd stepped up to arenasand 2022's Fix Yourself, Not the Worldconsolidated their unstoppable rise with the band's first Number One album.Headline shows at Crystal Palace and The O2 followed amid the band's biggesttouring cycle so far, taking in arenas across the globe and culminating atReading 2024, where the band headlined a rammed Radio One tent overspillingwith crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain their core audience twenty yearsinto their career.