http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_JInWvSHE

“Choked Out” describes a wrestler being choked, but it forces the listener to consider what we do when we’re desperate.

Track: “Choked Out”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

Much like how “the drugs album” isn’t only about drugs and “the Bible album” isn’t at all about the Bible, Beat the Champ is only tangentially about wrestling. The album delights in the language and characters of wrestling, but as John Darnielle says it’s about the difficulties of life. Even the EP released right after the album works this way: “Blood Capsules” is directly about a wrestler who can’t make ends meet despite being willing to do anything. That makes it a nice companion piece for “Choked Out,” a more in-the-moment examination of the same idea.

At a show in New York, Darnielle talked about how the song destroys his voice. It’s not really the kind of song the band writes as much these days. It’s an explosion, and after two minutes you’re left to consider what the flurry of words represents. As they are choked, Darnielle’s narrator describes the process and why they’re okay with it. A horrified nurse realizes they’re going beyond the bounds of what wrestlers should do, and the reality is that if you don’t fight within the “rules” when you wrestle you can do serious damage to yourself. In that sense, “fake” or “real” doesn’t really matter. The result may be scripted, but you have to put on a show without hurting yourself to get to the result.

They know the crowd wants to see something that looks real and they’re willing to oblige them at the cost of his consciousness. “Everybody has their limits // nobody’s found mine,” they tell us, establishing a willingness to do whatever it takes to put on a show. The crowd screams “like hounds in the heat of the chase” and the wrestler continues to describe representations of death. The ultimate sadness of the song: it’s all for $200.