Motorpoint Arena Nottingham gig for hot properties The Wombats later this month

Three years since scoring their debut UK number one album with Fix Yourself Not The World, The Wombats are back and bigger than ever.

Oh! The Ocean has a confessional emotional honesty that makes the Liverpool band's music as cathartic and relatable as it is catchy and playful, to their continuously growing young fanbase.

The three-piece took 50 new songs to Echo Park, LA, in July 2024 for six weeks of sessions with new producer John Congleton to create their most sonically adventurous album yet. The title is inspired by a revelatory trip to the beach frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy took on a family holiday.

Speaking on the experience, Murph said: “I’ve been to many beaches and seas and coasts over the years but for some reason it felt like the first time I had ever seen it and was truly present.

"There was this revelation that I had been living a life caught up in my own head, or in some kind of racing helmet or with blinkers on. It was really a potent experience.”

The album’s first offering Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, premiered as the Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1's New Music Show with Jack Saunders in January. It delves into lush tropical pop, falsetto funk and futuristic orchestral textures as Murph relates, but also comes to terms with his anti-social side.

“[It] is about constantly defaulting to a 'Lone Wolf' mindset, and what the real life consequences of that may be.”

This relatable sentiment is reflected in the lyrics: “Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come, It's not that I hate you, I just hate everyone.”

Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-noughties indie rock scene with 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, Murph, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen and drummer Dan Haggis have maintained an incredible upward momentum.

2011’s electro-flecked second album This Modern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars, 2015’s third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation, with Greek Tragedy a viral hit several times over.

By 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, they'd stepped up to arenas and 2022’s Fix Yourself, Not the World consolidated their unstoppable rise with the band’s first Number One album, seeing them reach over 2.5 billion streams.

Headline shows at Crystal Palace and The O2 followed amid the band’s biggest touring cycle so far, taking in arenas across the globe and culminating at Reading 2024, where the band headlined a rammed Radio One tent overspilling with crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain their core audience 20 years into their career.

For more on the forthcoming gig, as part of an arena tour, you can go to www.motorpointarenanottingham.com