Wesley Gonzalez

Event information

Wesley Gonzalez made a name for himself at an early age as the enigmatically petulant frontman and founder of guitar-shredding pop-punk band Let’s Wrestle. In 2015, after ten years together, the group disbanded and Gonzalez set his sights on an entirely different approach to songwriting: “On my first recordings away from Let’s Wrestle, I wanted to completely indulge myself with the experimentation that I had previously kept to my bedroom demos.”

Without letting go of his fascination with Beatlesesque melodies, Gonzalez taught himself to play piano and began writing songs which hark back to mid 70’s singer-songwriters such as Todd Rundgren and Emmitt Rhodes but with added elements of soul and funk – drawing upon influences like Sly And The Family Stone and Donny Hathaway. After spending one summer revisiting early electronic music (White Noise, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Mort Garson), Gonzalez invested in some synths and wrote his debut record. Although Gonzalez made a conscious retreat from punk music, he maintains his work is “still defined as angry music; anger is still an energy. All the lyrics are rooted in my disgust with a lot of the modern world, and feeling powerless as a young person in our society”.