Let’s Wrestle…gap-tooth bravado

I liked but didn’t love the new album from Let’s Wrestle.

Here’s a bit from my Blurt review

In the Court of the Wrestling Let's is a crooked-toothed grin of an album, all cocky bravado and bristly post-punk brashness on the surface, but with an engaging undercurrent of goofy vulnerability. Feckless charm will only get you so far, but that's where Let's Wrestle takes you. They are, as Wesley Patrick Gonzales intimates in a voice that's cracked all the way through, the men you'll grow to love.

Musically, these songs are mostly founded on a spatter of eighth note guitars, a barrage of frantic drums, an occasional dropped-in, sing-along chorus. Above it all, Gonzales reigns with a half-baked charisma, letting his romantic insecurities ("I'm in Love with Destruction", "It's Not Going to Happen"), adolescent humor ("Diana's Hair") and mild psychosis ("Insects") hang out with a slip-sided smile. A couple of times, the band dips a toe into milder, more melodic waters, with the ukulele-strummed lyricism of "Only in Dreams" and the waltz-timed, doo-wop-tinged "My Schedule." Yet mostly this is about young men bashing guitars and hammering drums and making triumphant choruses out of the silly things that flit through their heads. It's fun, in a rough-hewn, mildly funny, self-aware sort of way -- like Art Brut but not as clever - mostly because it's never entirely clear how seriously you are supposed to take all this.

More

“We Are the Men You’ll Grow to Love Soon”


“I’m in a Fighting Mood”