91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle Finds Refuge In The Ring

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

The Mountain Goats have a new album called Beat The Champ. It's unusual in that it is a concept album about professional wrestling, based on the interest in that sport band leader John Darnielle has had since he was a boy. Darnielle is also a prose writer whose novel Wolf in White Van was nominated for a 2014 National Book Award. Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker has this review.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Ken Tucker reviews rock, country, hip-hop and pop music for Fresh Air. He is a cultural critic who has been the editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, and a film critic for New York Magazine. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards. He has written book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Stories From This Author
  1. Taylor Swift's confessional 'Tortured Poets' would have benefitted from an edit
  2. Beyoncé bucks the country industry establishment with sprawling 'Cowboy Carter'
  3. Tierra Whack springs to the forefront of hip-hop creativity on a new album