I just read Joseph Fink's review and I'm so so pumped for the new Mountain Goats album (and the accompanying Fillmore show in June!).
I don't love wrestling. But I love that this entire album is about it. I love that about so many of the Mountain Goats' albums: something was ingrained in JD's mind—something mattered so much—that it warranted 12(+) songs.
Here's one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny2QpZFwE2k
There are certain things, places, and people that I feel exactly this way about. Here's the closest, most relevant example I can think of. If I were an able songwriter, I would probably have enough feelings about the 1998-1999 San Diego Padres to fill an entire album. I could romanticize the breathtaking field-level view at my first baseball game, or the time Bondy and I giddily met Bruce Bochy in person at Qualcomm Stadium (you're looking at an O.G. Bochy fan right here), or being 10 years old and organizing Topps cards in a plastic binder. Phil Nevin's lucky number 23. Hell's Bells. Winning the NL Pennant. That heartbreaking 4-0 sweep. It's odd that these things would stir up so many feels (especially because I am the least sports-enthusiastic person I know), but they are rooted so deep in my memory that just looking at a '98 roster gives me the warm fuzzies.
The great thing about so many Mountain Goats songs is how they perfectly capture those little scenes from childhood, or whenever. All those little buried details, making everything feel so familiar even if you didn't experience it first hand. To quote the above linked review, "I think that the entire career of the Mountain Goats has been about giving names to nameless bodies, and remembering unremembered rooms. I can’t think of a more worthy cause."
I can't wait for this album.