Lets fucking wrestle!

Neil Jones on Let’s Wrestle at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach

Let’s Wrestle

1st July 2009 - Clwb Ifor Bach - Cardiff

Television Personalities, Vic Godard and the Subway Sect, Felt, The Fall - this is the immaculately rebel-indie heritage of London’s Lets Wrestle, and seeing singer Wesley Patrick Gonzales stalk tonight’s venue like he’s lost his library card before-hand makes one dream of the days (if they ever existed) when more awkward, talented fellows held the limelight from your more typical indie-rock posers.

Let’s Wrestle are a twinkle in the eye of the most beatific and passionate indie kid - their world a total embrace of the now, kicking and scratching at the surface, taking bleakness and depression and fighting against it with glorious, impulsive asides, and making the listener feel joyous inside. Their sound is jagged yet Pop to its core, soul, hope, humour, anger, aggression, sadness and ecstasy fighting for expression amidst the sleeping and erupting melodies, and tonight it kind of all meanders into life, the band sauntering through the opening track 'My Arms Don’t Bend That Way, Damn It!' like they’re waiting for the oven to pre-heat before jumping in, yet it’s brilliant - lazy and lyrically defiant, stealing hope from a hopeless situation with its genius chorus of “they said if you want to help, just kill yourself - but I won’t do that”.

It focuses attention on the band right away, and then what’s impressive is the way that Gonzales takes it to another plane with his voice and lyrics, growling like Mark E Smith and humouring like Woody Allen while his two cohorts - bassist Mike Lightning and drummer Darkus Bishop - play away in their respective worlds of off-beat glamour and art-punk frenzy. 'It’s Not Going to Happen' is such a noble song of resigned love, shimmying and shambling its way, exploding here and there in such a laid-back and thoughtful manner, 'I Won’t Lie to You' following in its melancholy trail, wonderfully open hearted and shimmering on a different, more upbeat plane. 'Tanks' has that irresistible bass/guitar/drums shimmer of Stolen Recordings label-mates Pete and the Pirates - plucked from joyous, timeless indie hearts, bouncing about like robins on a tree whilst Gonzales does his work weaving a lyrical pattern of loss and affection, and 'In Dreams' is romantic to its core, doomedly-romantic, with perfect echoes of Roy Orbison, its poetry and poignancy in the way it sounds like fallen dreams being made to blossom again in sheer hope.

The band have stirred up a quiet fervour by now, it’s a glorious, easy intensity which mingles magically with the melodies, and the closing, signature track 'Let’s Fucking Wrestle' metaphorically takes the roof off the place, boundlessly energetic, savvy and playful as it goes, gleefully name-checking a bunch of British ‘80s pro-wrestlers, and including the irresistible line “let‘s wrestle, let‘s fucking wrestle - get your crack pipe out baby and let‘s start a fight”. The Londoners are really something - modern punks with their heads in the stars, peaking at the moon of love - an epically-resigned, broken and beatific band of outsiders roaming indie clubs with a pen and a song, real shivers inside material. And their debut LP, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s’, is an unpolished gem.

© 2009 Neil Jones

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