The Wombats first full length CD, A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, was released by Roadrunner last summer. This disc contains a number of tracks from the band's Japanese-only debut, Girls, Boys And Marsupials, along with a handful of new tunes.

I caught The Wombats at The Annex in 2007 when they were touring on their self-titled debut EP and thought the show was one of the best of the year. The band's music has the pop-punk energy of the early Buzzcocks, filtered through gallons of self-depreciating wit and three-part harmonies. A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation was originally released in the UK in 2007 and the band had most of these songs in their set when they toured the States in '07.

Both the band's live set and the CD open with the a cappella do-wop of "Tales of Girls, Boys & Marsupials". From here, the band goes into twelve cuts of frantic, post-punk dance floor chant-alongs. The band's lyrics aren't deep but it is sheer fun to pogo along with Murph's wry tales of romance gone wrong.

The band captures the energy of their live shows on this disc so, rather than simply list the strongest cuts from this disc, I thought I would post live videos for each of the stand-out songs.

The Wombats - Kill the Director (Live)


The Wombats - Let's Dance to Joy Division (Live)


The Wombats - Moving to New York (Live)


The Wombats - Backfire at the Disco (Live)


Unlike some of The Wombats' contemporaries, this band has more than one great single and everything that you ever wanted to hear from the band is collected on this disc. Now that this release is almost two years old, I'm waiting anxiously for the follow-up.

Last month, Roadrunner issued a special digital-only edition of A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation (available on iTunes) which contains four bonus tracks:
- Metro Song,
- Derail and Crash,
- Bleeding Love and
- Is This Christmas?

Links:
The Wombats' MySpace Profile