The Mountain Goats’ new LP Beat The Champ is an emotional collection of stories interwoven with a wrestling theme throughout. NPR is currently previewing the LP as part of their First Listen series:
In “The Legend Of Chavo Guerrero,” he tells of a real-life pro wrestler he idolized as a child, relating past glories in the ring while conveying a sense of faded wonder. But the song builds to a true-to-life twist: Rather than fading into oblivion, Chavo Guerrero raised a son whose fame as a wrestler exceeded his own, and found joy in the company of his family. Darnielle spends a lot of Beat The Champ in desolate parking lots and unremembered rooms. But he also loves his subjects enough to issue a reminder on their behalf, as he does in “The Legend Of Chavo Guerrero,” that it can be “real sweet to grow old.”
“Luna” is about the fire that destroyed all of Luna Vachon’s possessions in 2010, and “Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan” covers the murder of Bruiser Brody. Personally, I’m already obsessed with the first track, “Southwestern Territory,” a “nostalgic, but mostly realistic look at the workaday Southwest underworld of the pro wrestlers he idolized as a kid.”
The album will be released on April 7, but I’m pretty sure I’ll already be in love with the entire thing by then.
