Chappaqua Wrestling’s long-awaited debut album hits the intended notes.
‘Old blokes tend to hate it,’ says Charlie Woods, co-frontman of Brighton’s Chappaqua Wrestling in reference to how some people view pronouncing the band’s name (it’s Chap-Ak-Wa, by the way).
As a generalization it’s not without its flaws, but having moved from leafy Sussex to Manchester to study the influence of bands listened to by people now with more head than hair on their work is not to be denied.
This link with the past is strengthened by having former Ocean Colour Scene bassist Damon Minchella on production duties, and Plus Ultra was shaped by the various Chappaqua Wrestling members’ veneration for Oasis, The Clash and Foals, although for lovers of intrigue they’ve also pronounced it ‘music for our generation’.
There’s a lot you could unpick there if you chose to be arsed but the good news is that the band’s debut, having sat in the can for 18 months due to boring industry stuff, belatedly follows-up on the promise of their early single The Rift almost three years after its release.
Part, you could argue, of the appeal of Oasis et al is that they rarely if ever crossed the streams of rock n’ roll and what’s going on, but Chappaqua Wrestling rightly manage to have a lot on their minds and write about it too.
Opener Full Round Table sees both a gloomy future (‘We won’t have a house or a car that’s brand new’) but also salvation in the present’s things (‘There’s always a plane and a full round table’), its arms-around-the-shoulder guitars and a tambourine bleeding
out to bright white lights. Close your eyes and it could be…somewhere, anywhere you want.
‘It’s a rock album so it has to have a big bit of release, relief, mayhem’, Woods’ school friend and fellow Wrestler Jake Mac says, but he and the band are smart enough to understand that the market for permanent nostalgia is an ever-decreasing circle.
Here the gnarlier post-punk of Wayfinding and Kulture’s attack on disposable unity are an opting out, the latter sweeter but still a rejection of always jabbing at a seam of adrenaline which soon runs dry.
Pausing for breath reveals Chappaqua Wrestling’s love for all of whatever’s passed for indie since the C86 generation. Not In Love – a duet with keyboardist Coco Varda – overloads on trademark sugary vocals and Pastels-type jangle, whilst Opaque comes wrapped in Madchester’s carefree haze.
As obvious students the temptation to apply things too literally must’ve been hard to resist, and Chappaqua Wrestling’s material is unsurprisingly at its weakest when the rules are followed.
Here Need You No More recycles Noel, Liam and Ian when they forget the special sauce (the results of which, let’s be honest, we already know) and the shoegaze of My Fall I and My Fall II – sort of the same song but not quite – are missing the atmospherics that lovers of the fx pedal hold dear.
So, where’s the rock? Where’s the release? Where’s the mayhem? The answer is all these things are found sparking off each other on Wide Asleep, not the first song to be written about the mental waterboarding of scrolling our devices constantly, but one of the best. Gifting itself a huge solo midway through, being told to not give a fuck has rarely sounded more responsible.
Old blokes might hate Plus Ultra. But then again, they really might not.
