Lollapalooza week kicked off with some pre-fest after shows, including The Wombats and Last Dinosaurs on Tuesday, July 26th at the House of Blues.

Last Dinosaurs is an Australian rock band, consisting of Sean Caskey, Lachlan Caskey, Michael Sloane, and Dan Koyama. The band warmed up the crowd for The Wombats, joking that it was fitting because “The Wombats are near and dear as an Australian animal.” Throughout their set, I noticed many fans throughout the venue singing along to songs like “Zoom,” “Apollo,” and “Italo Disco,” which the band introduced by saying “If you have any Italian descent, this one goes out to you.” Last Dinosaurs has a new album coming out November 4th called From Mexico With Love, which you can preorder here.

Next up, The Wombats took the stage to a very packed venue of fans ready to dance and sing along to their entire set. The trio consisting of Matthew “Murph” Murphy, Tord Øverland Knudsen, and Dan Haggis had toured earlier this year in support of their fifth studio album Fix Yourself, Not the World, so it was fitting that their show kicked off with two newer songs from that record— “Flip Me Upside Down” and “This Car Drives All by Itself.” From the get-go, Murph and Knudsen unleashed their infectious energy, bouncing around the stage as they played. Before transitioning to a throwback track “Moving To New York,” Murph told the crowd that he “wished this song was about Chicago,” but nevertheless, the Chicagoans still went wild for the song, making the House of Blues floor literally shake from all their jumping.

The set continued to weave through The Wombats’ expansive catalog, including a few songs from 2015’s Glitterbug. As a preface for “Pink Lemonade,” Murph said “I sing a lot about fruits… lemons… this song is the first one about a lemon tonight. The pink lemon.” The other lemony song is of course “Lemon to a Knife Fight,” which comes from 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. The band’s good humor came through several other times during the show— about half way through, they broke out into an impromptu muzak tangent, which got a loud reaction to the crowd. “That’s very kind of you, you did not need to applaud for that,” the band replied.

The evening truly felt like a much-needed escape from everything going on in the outside world, and Murph further facilitated that release by asking the crowd to raise their hands and give him an “end of the world scream” before the performance of “Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)” from The Modern Glitch.

The Wombats played their hit “Greek Tragedy” as their “pretend last song” before returning for a 3-song encore that pulled from songs old and new. During the official last song “Turn,” even people in the way back of the venue were dancing with massive smiles on their face. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again— it’s literally impossible to be sad at a Wombats show.

See photos of the evening below, and see where you can catch The Wombats on the road next here.