Wrestlemania was a few weeks back. It’s easily the biggest night in the WWE’s regular schedule of events and all the wrestling fans I know were pretty pleased with it. I wonder if John Darnielle watched? After all, the guy just released a whole album’s worth of music about pro wrestling.
On paper, it sounds kind of pretentious. After all, Darnielle is a folkie kind of guy, particularly when he plays as The Mountain Goats. His music is gentle, acoustic and kind of self-absorbed, the same way a lot of singer-songwriter types are. Just hearing he’s been writing about pro-wrestling gave me the idea he’s intentionally slumming or looking for an excuse to be ironic.
Because let’s face it: people look down on pro-wrestling. Tell someone you like it and the reaction will generally be condescending to some degree. “You know it’s fake, right?” Yes, that’s the whole point! It’s entertainment, the same as almost anything else on TV.
As is music, which brings me back to the Mountain Goats and their latest record. On Beat the Champ, Darnielle has 13 songs about wrestling. Even the titles drip kayfabe: “Heel Turn 2,” “Hair Match,” “Choked Out.”
But what’s surprising is how good Beat the Champ is, which is to say it’s pretty good. It’s character-driven without sounding too wordy, it uses an interesting sonic palette (including woodwinds and strings) but never sounds pompous. Needless to say, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. And I figured I’d like it.
The Mountain Goats open the record with “Southwestern Territory,” where Darnielle imagines the life of a working wrestler: they’re on the road, getting knocked around and work their asses off. “I try to remember what life was like long ago, but it’s gone, you know,” he sings. Musically, the song is dominated by Darnielle’s piano and voice, with nice accents from woodwind instruments and gentle percussion. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, but it works: if anything, Darnielle’s idea of pro-wrestling is kind of lonely and the spare arrangement gives it that kind of vibe.
It’s not all slow and moody. On “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” him and a small band kick into a folk-rock jam, complete with handclaps and a guitar solo, with Darnielle singing about watching a tag-team champion wrestler who’s “coming off the top rope.”
Elsewhere, Darnielle uses wrestling as a way to dive into character. He has a song called “Heel Turn,” but throughout the record he eagerly plays the bad guy: “if you can’t beat them, make ‘em bleed like pigs,” he snarls on “Foreign Object.” And “Choked Out,” him and the band kickstart the tempo as Darnielle shouts how “everybody’s got their limits, nobody’s found mine.”
Maybe the most interesting parts of Beat the Champ are the ones where Darnielle looks at where kayfabe and reality intersect. The most unsettling song here is the one that strays the furthest into reality: “Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan,” a retelling of Bruiser Brody’s death by a knife-wielding wrestler.
Similarly, “The Ballad of Bull Ramos,” imagines the post-wresting life of that character: he works all the time, gets recognized by a doctor as he lays in operating room, spends his days reminiscing about his glory days.
At times, Beat the Champ reminded me of Sufjan Stevens’ music, particularly of when Stevens decided to make an album for each state, particularly in instrumentation.
But where I find Stevens’ writing grating and shallow, Darnielle’s seems more genuine: I never got the sense he was trying to show off how smart he is, was being ironic or just generally speaking down to the listener. He likes these gimmicks and the people behind them.
Basically, even if he didn’t watch Wrestlemania this year, he’s not going to put it down either.
Rating: 4/5