Send "Let's Wrestle " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 "We are the men you'll grow to love soon," goes one of the catchiest choruses from In the Court of the Wrestling Let's, the wry and lovably buffoonish debut album from London's Let's Wrestle. It's difficult, however, to tell whether they're mocking themselves (as in, "I'm not about to change any time soon, so get used to this") or apologizing ("I know I'm a mess right now, but bear with me, I'm working on it"). The tension between those two poles-- refusing to grow up and yearning to move on-- is the emotional engine that drives the band and its impressively confident record.The members of Let's Wrestle are barely out of their teens, which helps explain their uncanny knack for articulating the pain of youth. Despite their age, they take most of their reference points from the shaggy, careening indie rock of the mid-1990s, an era in full force when they were in diapers. Singer/songwriter and guitarist Wesley Patrick Gonzalez ladles big bursts of overcharged guitar onto his winsome pop songs, and his cracked, hoarse voice recalls Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis. The songs don't advance so much as stumble drunkenly from one section to the next, and Gonzalez himself is a blurter: "I've got only one function, and that's to mess things up," he admits (or boasts) on "I'm in Love With Destruction". The album is full of this kind of compulsive truth-telling-- "I Won't Lie to You", a galloping punk tune opens with a devastatingly honest realization: "No matter how many records I buy, I can't fill this void."...full text |
| Avclub |
| It’s difficult not to be charmed by a band that begins a song called “I Won’t Lie To You” with the line, “No matter how many records I buy, I just can’t fill this void.” (Not to mention one that pronounces it “vo-o-oid.”) That’s a typical Let’s Wrestle moment, as might be expected from an album titled after King Crimson’s 1969 bow. But the geekily amateurish indie splatter-pop of the young London trio couldn’t sound more different than Crimson’s heavy prog. In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s is full of guitar amps that sound about to collapse (“I’m In Love With Destruction”), just like guitarist-singer-songwriter Wesley Patrick Gonzalez frequently does. (See “My Schedule.”) Gonzalez is a romantic, tipping his hat to Roy Orbison on “In Dreams” and penning the upbeat “We Are The Men You’ll Grow To Love Soon,” in which he croaks, “We are the most reliable guys in the world” and offers to buy drinks. He’s so smart and winning, it’d be a shame to say no....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| Among Let’s Wrestle’s list of given influences, two initially stand out as particularly apposite. Vic Godard and the Subway Sect took the half-learned clatter of punk schooling and applied it to smart, sophisticated proto-new wave with a soul learning, while the Television Personalities traded in singular lyrical matter, playfully whimsical alt-rock with a cracked edge and a frontman who was uncompromising about most things, not least the art of tonality in vocal style. Even if you’re already primed not to come to the tremendously titled In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s, if you know the inspiration and are expecting great avant-garde virtuosity you might wonder whether this sort of thing wasn’t better served in the short burst of last year’s In Loving Memory Of… EP rather than this full length album. Well, not quite – there’s three short ‘interludes’ and the title track is four and a half minutes of instrumental throwdown that aspires to Lynyrd Skynyrd. But then again, there’s an indication throughout the rest of the album that for all their faux-shambolic nature there’s plenty going on in conception. It may like want you to believe it’s all offhanded and scrappy, but it also belongs to a more successful British lineage, that of the straight ahead punk influenced power-pop exhibited in various methods by the Buzzcocks, The Wedding Present and The Cribs. At the forefront of such idiot savant new wave – ‘We Are The Men You’ll Grow To Love Soon’ – is singer, guitarist and songwriter Wesley Patrick Gonzalez. A man with a voice like the Cribs’ Ryan Jarman who’s just woken up in a lyrical world inhabited by almost unique urbanite concerns, just as a band named after a David Shrigley drawing might suggest, enveloping the old universal favourite of lost love. ‘My Schedule’ is a litany of deeds for the day, involving libraries, charity shops and forgetting to put the kettle on, relayed in swaying part-waltz time with doo-wop backing vocals before Gonzalez cracks and admits “I wish you’d call on me but you don’t call at all”. ‘I’m In Love With Destruction’ is driven by insistent drumming and the shame of whatever happened the previous night, as Gonzalez declares “I’ve only got one function and that’s to mess things up”. He gradually wises up and realises “you stopped caring since I messed things up”. As for happier times, echoes of early rock and roll turn up again in the ukelele and handclap driven ‘In Dreams’, as the 1950s indebted title spurs...full text |
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