Among Let's Wrestle's list of given influences, two initially stand out as particularly apposite. Vic Godard and the Subway Sect took the half-learned clatter of punk schooling and applied it to smart, sophisticated proto-new wave with a soul learning, while the Television Personalities traded in singular lyrical matter, playfully whimsical alt-rock with a cracked edge and a frontman who was uncompromising about most things, not least the art of tonality in vocal style. Even if you're already primed not to come to the tremendously titled In The Court Of The Wrestling Let’s, if you know the inspiration and are expecting great avant-garde virtuosity you might wonder whether this sort of thing wasn't better served in the short burst of last year's In Loving Memory Of... EP rather than this full length album. Well, not quite - there's three short 'interludes' and the title track is four and a half minutes of instrumental throwdown that aspires to Lynyrd Skynyrd. But then again, there's an indication throughout the rest of the album that for all their faux-shambolic nature there's plenty going on in conception. It may like want you to believe it's all offhanded and scrappy, but it also belongs to a more successful British lineage, that of the straight ahead punk influenced power-pop exhibited in various methods by the Buzzcocks, The Wedding Present and The Cribs.At the forefront of such idiot savant new wave - 'We Are The Men You'll Grow To Love Soon' - is singer, guitarist and songwriter Wesley Patrick Gonzalez. A man with a voice like the Cribs' Ryan Jarman who's just woken up in a lyrical world inhabited by almost unique urbanite concerns, just as a band named after a David Shrigley drawing might suggest, enveloping the old universal favourite of lost love. 'My Schedule' is a litany of deeds for the day, involving libraries, charity shops and forgetting to put the kettle on, relayed in swaying part-waltz time with doo-wop backing vocals before Gonzalez cracks and admits "I wish you'd call on me but you don't call at all". 'I'm In Love With Destruction' is driven by insistent drumming and the shame of whatever happened the previous night, as Gonzalez declares "I've only got one function and that's to mess things up". He gradually wises up and realises "you stopped caring since I messed things up". As for happier times, echoes of early rock and roll turn up again in the ukelele and handclap driven 'In Dreams', as the 1950s indebted title spurs memories of of daydreaming and wistfulness.And then there's 'Song For Old People', which has all the respect for elders you'd imagine Gonzalez would have, as he illustrates how much better he'll be when he's an OAP. And then there's 'Diana's Hair', wherein the narrator misses Diana Princess Of Wales so much that he becomes fixated on a man with an apparently identical 'do.Are Let's Wrestle merely nouveau slackers, then? I'd argue not, more exhibitors of the deadpan. There's a bitterly lovelorn charm of a band learning to better themselves. Take note of how 'I Won't Lie To You' rears up with rapid fire guitar, bares its heart at speed and then collapses attempting a guitar hero close beyond the performance's means. It's not quite pop-punk, more a kind of rock'n'roll refraction through thirty years of what used to be called the alternative. At a basic level it reflects their strength - whack it down, capture the essence of a band on their debut album just going for it with full vim and vigour, with searchingly insistent counterpoint basslines, raggedly exuberant riffs and whack it down drumming. It's an odd record, potentially an offputting one, but eventually it'll win you over with its strength of personality and the fact that behind the bluster is a very English indie rock (pre-unit shifting) kind of ragged glory. 77%Let's Wrestle on Myspace