Have The Wombats made it over the pond?
Hailing from Liverpool, the city which famously gave us the Beatles, the Boo Radleys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Echo and the Bunnymen, and more, they have some big musical shoes to fill. And while they might not be on a par with Paul, John, George and Ringo, it’s good stuff. Catchy, edgy, and lighthearted, albeit with lyrics that come with lashings of irony – why would you move to New York, the city that doesn’t sleep, if you’re having problems with your sleep? – and serious, almost philosophical, undertones.
The most pertinent of their songs, given my fascination with everything mental fitness and how it helps us build the self-awareness to ‘recognise the emotions you feel as a result of different situations and what you can do about them’ – as I wrote in March’s blog – is 21st Century Blues, which was released on an EP in 2015.
The song explores, unsurprisingly, the troubles we face in the here and now, as we’re all so constantly bombarded by society’s pressures, to the extent that it opens with the line:
Did you get that house, the one with the swimming pool,
The one you never shut up about?
And lead vocalist Matthew Murphy sings about needing to, ‘decipher the differences between what I’ll always want and what I’ll never need.’
This may seem like a bit of a tangent but if you haven’t read Fight Club, do so. And yes, it was a book before Brad Pitt sauntered around in a pink dressing gown with teacups on it, showing off his flawless abs. Chuck Palahnuik’s exploration of the darker sides of the human mind, and the impact of the world around us on it, sees his protagonist (whose name we never learn) concoct – spoiler alert – an alter ego, ‘a projection … a disassociative personality disorder. A psychogenic fugue state.’ Tyler Durden is the Narrator’s hallucination.
Fight Club’s most famous line is without doubt, ‘I want you to hit me as hard as you can.’ But it’s shortly before this that a more poignant notion is shared – by the Narrator in the book; by Pitt’s Tyler in the film – as Palahnuik shows how misplaced we are in our views of what’s important; how under the influence we are of society’s expectations:
‘The things you used to own, now they own you.’
‘Under the influence’ … that’s an interesting phrase. One which members of The Sober Curator probably all know a little too well. And it’s certainly not a positive one, is it? Neither from the perspective of having had one too many Jägerbombs, nor the point of view of ‘try[ing] to impress the world and buy[ing] too many things’ (another Palahnuikism).
I’m no philosopher but a message I take from Fight Club is that the anti-hero Tyler represents a liberation from society’s influences. We could all do with adopting a little bit more of a Tyler approach to life. Obviously I’m not expecting everyone to live in a house that’s ‘waiting for something, a zoning change or a will to come out of probate, and then it will be torn down’ with ‘no lock on the front door from when police or whoever kicked in the door’ but you get my point. We are perpetually subjected to consumerism and materialism and it’s suffocating.
Which is why I’m referencing The Wombats, because the line that stands out for me the most in 21st Century Blues is:
If my head’s in the clouds, in the clouds I wanna be.
The idea of allowing our minds to drift from time to time, rather than being constantly ‘on’ cannot be underestimated. It is part of the process of building mental fitness, which allows us to be resilient to the pushes and pulls from all around us, and learn how to decipher the differences between ‘want’ and ‘need’. Some people may say that daydreaming is a waste of time, but that’s bullshit. We need our minds to take us on weird and wonderful little journeys to help us set goals. Without a bit of time spent thinking about our aspirations, we’d never have the desire to step out of our comfort zones and unlock our potential.
Understanding who those goals are for is the next step in the process. Take sobriety. You have to make the conscious decision that alcohol is no longer serving you. You can’t quit for anyone else; it has to be for you.
You should invest the same line of thinking in all your decisions. Are you purchasing, consuming, investing, interacting, etc, because you believe it will make you happier and improve your life in the long term, or are you doing so because you want to look good in the eyes of someone else?
Changing how you consume social media is a good place to start; more accurately, paying attention to how posts make you feel and purging the ones that leave you feeling inadequate. If the people or accounts you follow interest you or inspire you, they can stay. But if any posts cause you to feel like you fall short, like something is unattainable, like you can’t afford something, like you’re missing something, like you don’t have enough or that you’re not enough, unfollow them. Instantly. Ditch the accounts that leave you comparing yourself to others or wishing you had something you don’t have, because it’s those ones that are causing us to fall down society’s rabbit hole, with the house with the swimming pool that we never shut up about.
Right, that’s enough from me for this month. I’m off to spend some time in the clouds.
I cover all of this in more detail in my book, READY, SET, LIFE – please pick up a copy.
By UK Sober Curator Contributor James Gwinnett
For more information, visit www.jamesgwinnett.com.
HEALTH & WELLNESS: How to Thrive in 2025 | James Gwinnett
Fight Club Trailer (1999)
The Wombats – 21st Century Blues
The Wombats – Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come
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