Why They Made An Album About Wrestling

"The major difference with wrestling is that the result is predetermined. It’s just theatre, it’s the same as any form of entertainment. It’s people who are good at their craft and if you enjoy the craft it connects with you on some level and you dig it. With wrestling, you have characters, it’s like opera, opera without music... But [the album] is as much an album about wrestling as it is about things that inspire and scare you as a child, things that motivated and comforted me.”

Darnielle is considered by many as one of the great contemporary songwriters. Did writing songs about such specific characters – famed wrestlers – make the process any more difficult? “This is something that resonates with me: everything is autobiographical. Your dreams – [if] you ever dream about something you don’t feel connected to yourself, it’s ‘cause you’re not looking hard enough. All your dreams are about you. And anything you write about, because you’re the only person you really know inside and out; so any person you write about, there are big chunks of yourself in it. You don’t even have to think about it, you don’t have to go ‘What part of this is me?’ You just look at it and you see where you yourself are reflected in it. Writing is like mirrors, you know.”

He covers a number of different wrestling personalities across the album, which is titled Beat The Champ. “There were so many stories to choose from, [but] these were the ones that I was most interested in. Ed Farhat, who I never saw wrestle, I didn’t see him on TV, but I used to read about him in magazines and they’d write about him in a fearsome way, ‘A terrifying guy who throws fire at people’. And it’s very scary: you see a picture of a guy with a fireball coming out of his hand, you know. So drawing on memories from there, but now I can actually watch stuff. I remember Bruiser Brody, I actually hadn’t read about his death and then found out he was stabbed outside.” After dedicating a song to Chavvo Guerrero, a childhood hero of Darnielle’s, the wrestling legend actually contacted him. “[Chavvo Guerrero] actually got in touch via Twitter and it was a huge honour. It’s incredible. I can’t even tell you.”

Darnielle is extremely proud of this album for “the musicianship”. “I’m so much better now than I was [in the beginning]. The thing with this record is, we’re so proud of this record because it really reflects how much we’ve grown: individually and as a band. Most of our stuff in the studio, the core track is live. The drums and the guitar and the bass and the vocals are usually recorded together. Some of these tracks were difficult: not prog rock, but they were a big step up for us. Playing slower, listening for spaces – these are the things you learn to do over time that’s very rewarding.”