But Shakespeare or no, the important thing is these guys give us playful sometimes darkly humorous lyrics against a rollickingly poppy — I persist, pogoable — sound. And there they are in elite company with bands like The Smiths.

When one listens to the lyrics of “Let’s Dance to Joy Division,” for example, echoes of “Girlfriend in a Coma,” resonate in the mind’s ear. “Let’s Dance to Joy Division and Celebrate the Irony/Everything is Going Wrong, But we’re so Happy.”

“Yeah,” Dan and Tord agree in unison. “Our sound is fairly upbeat, but then when you listen to the words, it’s sometimes kind of dark. That song is like people dancing and having fun to songs they really find quite depressing.”

“It’s about people dancing to Love will tear us apart… been havin’ a hard week, then letting loose. The ridiculousness of life gets you down, but it’s kind of like the music can get you out of it.” Some people choose alcohol or drugs, others choose Joy Division, others still the Wombats.

They say the lyrics and the sound are of equal importance to them. They like that “you can listen to the album again and again and find new things.”

The Code of the Wombat
The Wombats are on a roll. But where are they going? What do they want? Why do they do this? The rock 'n' roll dream to take over the world?

“We never had a set goal,” Dan waxes modest. “We like to live one day at a time,” Carpe Diem Dead Poet’s Society style.

He continues: “We want to keep on doing music full time. We don’t want to be a flash in the pan.”

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote to Walt Whitman after having read Leaves of Grass, I great you at the beginning of a great career.