“Southwestern Territory” opens Beat the Champ on a note you can view as hopeful or remorseful.

Track: “Southwestern Territory”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

“Southwestern Territory” isn’t really all that different, thematically, from the rest of Beat the Champ. The whole album is about wrestling, literally, but it’s really about the struggle to make ends meet. It’s fitting that the album starts with a song that sets the stage even more directly than most of the other tracks. We follow a character who views wrestling as a way of life, but not necessarily one that will make them famous. They hope this will work but suspect it won’t. They’re realistic.

I listened to it again to write this. I didn’t need to, as this is a song I’ve heard hundreds of times. But upon hearing it again it reminded me of the title track from Tallahassee. I’m not a musician and I can’t tell you exactly why those two feel similar to me beyond that they both open up thematic albums and they both feel sort of ethereal and high-pitched. Darnielle is especially high up there for much of “Southwestern Territory” and it ends up feeling sad as a result. “I try to remember to write in the diary // that my son gave me” is most of the backstory we get, but what does that tell you? Can’t you see this place in downtown Los Angeles, but also can’t you see this wrestler? So many of these narrators are hopeless, but this one is showing us more. The limitation of songwriting as character study is exploded by that brief two-line look into who this person is, but also who they hope to be.