American Wrestlers have broken out of their previous anonymity, releasing their debut record last year. They haven’t slowed down since. led by songwriter Gary McClure, the band is set to released their upcoming record, Goodbye Terrible Youth, on November 4th via Fat Possum.
Their first single off of the upcoming record is called “Give Up.” Recording the track, McClue says, “I wrote Give Up in the basement of our two room house, in the murder inducing heat of a Saint Louis night, half a mile from the Mississippi river. It came out in one shot after I plugged in and hit a chord that rang out with a middle-era Clash jangle. I followed that chord into Strummerland and ended up going via some first-album-Foo-Fighters deal to somewhere else. The descending guitar lead line came much later when I wanted to add something in the vain of the clean-chorus-reverb guitar runs of contemporary indieists. A friend told me that it’s a song about feeling trapped. I don’t know. He’s probably right. “I better watch lest my pretense is a loaded gun for pseudo Chuck Bukow’s to wave” is my favorite lyric-that-shouldn’t-really-
And we can certainly see that. The guitar is catchy as hell, and this upbeat jam has so much energy propelling it forward. But even so, the track has a mellowed out feel to it, like the song is effortless to produce. This track is fresh and so fun to listen to.
