Haven’t written about The Wombats in a while. Last time I did was in 2014. ‘Backfire at the Disco’ was a track I did a blog on here too, talking about how much I like it, why that is and so on and so forth. Some time between then and now I grew tired of it and it is now off the phone. That was The Wombats’ first single, I believe, and I remember seeing its video on MTV2 most of the time. It was all right. But it was the next single that got me thinking ‘This band might be onto something here’. Or something to that equivalent when I was 12 years old.

‘Kill the Director’ is the first ‘proper’ song from the band’s debut album, apparently inspired by the rom-com film The Holiday from 2006. It’s basically about the feeling of futility that one can feel when it comes to dating, trying to put on an act to try and impress a girl and failing in the process. The message is all in the song’s main refrain – “If this is a rom-com, kill the director”, roughly bows down to – if this is what love is meant to be like then end it now because it’s not worth it.

It works great as the opener, coming through with these alternating bass and guitar chords alongside Dan Haggis’ busy drumming. It’s fast, fast, fast stuff, exploding into the song’s chorus each time with the ‘ooh-ooh’ backing vocals that are a staple throughout the album. The ‘This is no/Bridget Jones’ coda gets a bit stale after a while for me, it doesn’t have to be repeated that many times or the line could have started just a few measures later, but as a whole the track doesn’t disappoint in delivering a hook upon hook in just under three minutes.