pro wrestling

211. Ox Baker Triumphant

Alex Russell Babylon Springs EP , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle sings a song for the bad guy in all of us in “Ox Baker Triumphant.”

Track: “Ox Baker Triumphant”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

Wrestling’s story involves the same beats as every other kind, but it benefits from more black and white narratives than other types of performance. The “heels” of wrestling often have to be very obvious to get an idea across quickly to an audience.

Ox Baker was a heel who punched people in the heart. You only need to hear one Ox Baker promo to understand him. He hates you and the goodness you represent, and he’s here to punch everyone who stands in the way of his dominance. When John Darnielle introduces “Ox Baker Triumphant” he often talks about the power of that idea. Ox Baker isn’t here to set up a complicated battle between good and evil and he isn’t here to win you over. He wants to punch your good guy in the heart. You don’t really get more to the point.

“Ox Baker Triumphant” is exactly what it says on the label. Ox Baker has been betrayed by the world he loves and he is here to get revenge on everyone and everything. Given what we know about Ox, we can assume he saw this coming. He demands that the others click their heels in a mock attempt to go home before yelling “I bet you never expected me!”

Darnielle’s soaring delivery on the studio version and the blown-out fury on most live versions accomplish the same thing. We get a sense that Ox Baker is done with all this and that his retribution is well-deserved. For all the time the good guys will get in later Goats songs, “Ox Baker Triumphant” reminds us why we love to watch the moments when people get pushed to their limits. It doesn’t really matter what he came to do in the first place, now it’s his time to shine.

161. Werewolf Gimmick

Alex Russell Beat the Champ , , , , , , , , ,

A wrestler gives in to their baser instincts and goes primal in “Werewolf Gimmick.”

Track: “Werewolf Gimmick”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

The drums sell “Werewolf Gimmick.” Jon Wurster joined the Mountain Goats in 2007 and they haven’t been the same since. There are probably purists who think the Mountain Goats are only “real” with just John Darnielle and a bassist, but I can’t imagine that person could listen to “Werewolf Gimmick” and defend that position. There are plenty of songs that only work because they have a full band with horns and drums and everything, but “Werewolf Gimmick” is a 150-second explosion where the drums never let up for a second. It’ll wear you out just to listen to it once, in a good way.

Beat the Champ uses wrestling and wrestlers to talk about a variety of things, but “Werewolf Gimmick” is actually in the ring. It’s about a wrestler who portrays a werewolf and a heel determined to sell his act through intensity. Wrestling comes in many varieties. Sometimes it’s about the camp factor, but wrestlers like this werewolf think it’s about sincerity. Are these guys actually fighting for real, he wants us to wonder, and just maybe, only one of them knows that?

John Darnielle is at peak snarl here. He embodies his werewolf character when he describes the other wrestler as “some sniveling local baby face with an angle he can’t sell.” You can hear the twist in his mouth over “dial” in “get told to maybe dial it back, backstage later on” and if you like this brand of Goats song, this may be one of your favorites. John Darnielle sometimes says that the quiet ones are best, but if you like the rockers and screamers, you can’t do much better than “Werewolf Gimmick.”

131. Foreign Object

Alex Russell Beat the Champ , , , , , , , , ,

“Foreign Object” is a “funny” song that shows how John Darnielle has grown up from the time when he wrote “funny songs.”

Track: “Foreign Object”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

“Foreign Object” is not, at first, a challenging song. It’s literally about a guy with a foreign object. John Darnielle makes light of it at live shows by talking about how obvious it is and how the song is exactly what you think. All of Beat the Champ talks about wrestling, but “Foreign Object” takes the subject matter and lives in it completely.

Our narrator is angry and trying to stir up some anger in his opponent. Bravado is central to professional wrestling and our hero here wants his opponent to know they’re going to come at them with something fierce, outside the rules, and violent. They mention an “astrolabe” which wouldn’t work very well in a fight, but it conjures up an image. The aim here is to get under your opponent’s skin and to incite the crowd, and what better than ancient, bizarre tools and threats to bite someone’s flesh?

John Darnielle wrote “funny” songs for years and sometimes talks about how he doesn’t want to be the “funny song guy” anymore. “The Monkey Song” and “The Anglo-Saxons” don’t make sense at a show where you might look deep inside your soul and consider “Wild Sage” and “In Corolla,” so it makes sense why he wants to escape his former self. However, “Foreign Object” stands proud on Beat the Champ as testimony to the fact that the man can still write something silly. The bebop chorus of excited “bap bap bap!” noises after a verse about maiming a man only makes sense on a Mountain Goats record, but it’s a fine example of how the band can express multiple ideas but still have a core identity.