English rock trio the Wombats performed spare, taut versions of “Lemon to a Knife Fight” and “Turn” in the run-up to the release of their new album, Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life.
The recorded version of lead single “Lemon to a Knife Fight” is full of buzzing electric guitars and firm percussion, but during their visit to Rolling Stone, the band stripped the song down to its core elements. Without drums and distortion, different elements come to the fore, including a jaunty whistle during the chorus and touching three-part vocal harmonies.
“Turn” is even gentler, a lovelorn ballad boosted by acoustic strumming and flashes of falsetto from Matthew Murphy. “You could give an aspirin the headache of its life,” Murphy sings. “Maybe it’s the crazy that I miss/ It won’t get better than this.”
Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life is due out Friday, February 9th. In an interview with Music Existence, Murphy said he wanted the LP to be “less synth driven [and] less produced.” “I kind of wanted to make an album that at least had the chance of being timeless, and not become outdated,” he adds. “So in those terms, it’s less production, less synthesizers, less wizardry.”
The Wombats’ last album, Glitterbug, reached Number Five on the U.K. albums chart.
