19 July 2008

Let's Wrestle - 'Let's Wrestle'

Well, this is ramshackle and basic fare, and therefore something I instantly love. I swear I like complex, subtle music too. But when it comes down to it it’s the primitive, brain-dodging urgency of rock and roll and pop music that really makes me happy. We should celebrate stupid music more. At the moment the twin pillars for me seem to be the insistent, reinvented blues of White Denim, a band who might finally be worth the hype, and the rediscovered classic pop of Lykke Li, for whom I seem to have developed an embarrassing adolescent crush. I would fill virtual pages about both of these if I wasn’t so bloody busy working these days. But they both seem to me contemporary returns to time-honoured sources. Equally elemental is this eponymous gem from Let’s Wrestle, a beered-up, belligerent male-bonding anthem that should be bellowed by crowds of bad shirt wearers at Friday night chucking out time down the local Wetherspoon’s. “Let’s wrestle, let’s fucking wrestle,” goes the chorus, and that’s most of it. There’s virtually nothing to this. It’s troglodyte stuff, the only touch of attempted class added by the gold-coloured vinyl. I need to see these guys perform it live, and won’t even mind the inevitable lager shower. I like the Fallesque cut of Let’s Wrestle’s jib, allied with a Fall fan’s nerdishness about bands and record collections (see their earlier records; they’re all good). This is, in summary, nothing more than simplistic, dumb, primitive and clumsy. You will understand by now, of course, that these are words of praise.