"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."
Gonzalez clearly has bought a lot of records though, and while they might not have cured his loneliness, they have boosted his songwriting. You can hear echoes of little-known but well-loved indie and punk bands he has in his collection. Some popular albums, too: Parklife-era Blur make an appearance in "My Schedule", in which the narrator offers a deadpan list of all the mundane things he's going to do today. "Diana's Hair", a disarmingly mournful ode to Princess Diana, recalls the sort of plainspoken story-songs the Kinks used to pen. All of it is worn pretty lightly, though-- witness the album's title, a completely ridiculous nod to King Crimson and an indicator these kids keep their influences at arms-length, where they can bat playfully at them. On "Song for Old People", Gonzalez squints and tries to imagine what happens to you when you grow old; the worst he can come up with is "their sense of humor may be lost." Considering that in a recent interview, Gonzalez revealed that he intends to title the band's next record Trout Mask Wrestlica, it seems, for him, those days are far, far away.
