There have been plenty of artists signed to Exploding in Sounds Records who preceded Jobber’s fuzzed-out grunge-pop sound (in fact the band boasts former members of Speedy Ortiz, Ovlov, and Maneka), but none of their predecessors can claim they’ve based their existence on amateur wrestling. Taking their name from the wrestling term for the figure used as a pawn to make the crowd favorite look more desirable, the project founded by Kate Meizner and Mike Falcone is gearing up to release their debut collection of songs through the label with Hell in a Cell scheduled to arrive October 21.
Appropriately, the first track we’re hearing from the EP is titled “Entrance Theme”—an apt name for the song that introduces the band, while also alluding to the hyped-up music wrestlers take the ring to. According to Meizner, the song was penned before the band was conceived and was, in fact, an exercise in crafting walkout music for a fictional wrestler. “I challenged myself to go against my natural intuition to write songs with lots of twists and turns,” she shares, “and instead pen a cohesive, fuzzed-out pop song in the style of The Cars and The Rentals to be an entrance theme for a babyface wrestler —which is wrestling jargon to describe one of the ‘good guys.””
The buzzing single also arrives with a visual by Zev Magasis—who’s recently also worked on videos with Alex G—comprised of scenes of amateur wrestling. “The video was filmed at a backyard wrestling event hosted by the Backyard Wrestling Organization in Milford, Connecticut, close to the towns where Mike and I grew up,” Meizner explains. “I love watching YouTube videos of backyard wrestling matches from the ’90s and early-’00s shot on handheld camcorders. It’s visually exciting and inspiring to see how much passion and care wrestlers pour into developing gimmicks and storylines in DIY wrestling.”
Watch the clip below, and pre-order the album here.
