Let’s Wrestle – Nursing Home
Rating: 
In a year’s short time, it appears that Let’s Wrestle has come a long way. After releasing and impressive debut in 2010, they’ve worked hard over the past year to push for another stellar alternative rock album. They stick to their guns on Nursing Home, using the formula for success that they accumulated on the past record.
Things start off with “In Dreams Part 2,” which gives a preview as to what this band can bring to the table in raw form. It begins slowly for the first few seconds, and then Let’s Wrestle kicks you in the face with their raw guitars. Then Wesley Gonzalez begins the iteration of his dreams, which seem strange, but it is only fitting, as they are someone else’s dreams. It’s an interesting and intriguing start off typical of this band. On the next song, “If I Keep On Loving You” they keep up their furious brit-punk stylings, but crank up the catchiness. I mean, you start off with some throbbing bass, add in the matted drums of the slight shriek of Gonzalez, and it’s love at first listen. For such a valid start, it’s easy to feel like the only way that Let’s Wrestle can go from here is up, and, it’s a pretty valid conclusion to come to.
This band goes on in their common fashion, but the songwriting feels a tad more complex on Nursing Home. They tackled dreams on track one, love on track two, living in the suburbs on track three, taking care of a mother on track six, the list goes on, etc. “For My Mother” comes as a bit of a standout for this band, both in the songwriting sense and in the typical sound of Let’s Wrestle. It’s a song without the classic raw guitar and the blasting cymbals and an emphasis on the delicacy of such a slow punk tune. There still are the perfectly imperfect vocals and the edginess, but it’s channeled into the soft plucking of the guitar along with the faint drums.
The only problem that I have seem to come across on Nursing Home is that there are a few, and I mean a few, songs that I can see myself passing by on future listens. On the last album, every track was a good pop-rock tune, destined for repeated listening, but there are a few that fall flat when you reach the end of the album. Perhaps it is just the nature of this style of brief songs, but overall, it’s a fairly decent album that will have you tapping your toes and clapping your hands to the fast paced beats.
[audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/dearjohn.mp3]Download: Let’s Wrestle – Dear John [MP3]