Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to achieve. Think of The Kinks. A song like “Waterloo Sunset”, the timeless Ray Davies classic, manages to be both easily memorable and emotionally complex all at once. Sometimes listening to a song is like a doorway to a different life. More than the sum of their parts, you know them instantly, yet the songs always have that quality. “Jungleland”, the epic Springsteen song off Born to Run is another. An entire landscape of striving and pain unfolds in a few minutes, pulling you in from the first notes, whether you hear it while buying a six in a bodega or after dropping the needle on to vinyl, surrounded by expensive speakers. The song doesn’t care – it still produces that unexplainable connection. There are albums you listen to, and there it is. You play it again. You still don’t know why exactly but it’s undeniable. That pull. And with a handful of simple, almost lo-fi songs, American Wrestlers have produced a raw, rough-hewn album of singular beauty.
No moments of glossy pretense. If art should feel like all the moments you can’t talk about out loud, then American Wrestlers is wrestling with art.
