Let’s Wrestle - In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s

Bands like Let’s Wrestle don’t exist any more. Well, apart from Let’s Wrestle that is. When we saw them live a while back we were presented with a band that played loudly, frantically and with a song featuring the lyrics “Let’s wrestle, let’s fucking wrestle”. Sadly none of these features are present on record, instead we’ve got a sixteen track album that’s a quagmire of Wedding Present buzzsawing guitars and betsit lyrics.

Yes, the album has a good name, and a song with the title ‘My Arms Don’t Bend That Way Damn It’ but aside from this and a couple of moments of lyrical inspiration there’s not much on Let’s Wrestle’s debut album that warrants any particular attention. The aforementioned ‘My Arms…’ is an OK starting track but ends too suddenly, as if the band themselves were bored with playing the song. ‘My Schedule’ also stands out a little if only for the fact it sounds like The Maccabees ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ recorded on a shoestring budget with lyrics, that unsurprisingly recount a daily schedule.

If sounding like The Wedding Present is one obsession of Let’s Wrestle then another may well just be tanks. One song takes that as a tile and runs with it, this being by far the most enjoyable song on the album. The lyrics appear to be about separation, although instead of whining about it it lists military units (including tanks unsurprisingly) that would be unable to make him see the person again. Cropping up in ‘Insects’ the lyrics recount dreaming about television programmes, football and tanks. Again the song about the space to dream comes from a different emotional area from much of The Weddo’s bemoaning songs of loss, enjoying the space that has come from the end of a relationship. Aside from this however, the lo-fi gutter punk of Let’s Wrestle sounds highly familiar.

There may well be other flashes of inspiration across this album but unfortunately as sonically the template is pretty damn flat it’s hard to pick them out. With some of the wordplay it’s evident that there may be a decent band lurking in Let’s Wrestle but on ‘In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s’, that band never really surface.