Providence rockers, Salem Wolves, taps into the human psyche and a lost wrestler’s supernatural ambition through new single “So Desperate.”
The arena-ready “So Desperate” is the first taste of Salem Wolves’ dynamic new album, July’s The Psychotron Speaks, a concept record that unearths the story of a down-on-his luck ‘80s-era pro wrestler named The Stranger, who taps into a mysterious power delivered from an unknowable and unthinkable eldritch device capable of bending the world around it and creating distortion, both aural and psychological.
Bouchard, equipped with a cavalcade of memorabilia and ephemera from The Stranger’s sudden reign, from old torn event posters to weathered trading cards to an unearthed zine penned by the indefatigable Sol Church chronicling this unbelievable arc, races back and forth between his fuzzy memories of the past and his cloudy understanding of the here and now. “So Desperate” strips away the piss and vinegar of the Wolves’ classic material for something elevated into pure grandeur, as the band’s black surf post-punk snarl gives way to dynamic rock and roll illuminated by the brightest of lights and the darkest of human emotion.
“‘So Desperate’ is about recontextualizing what should be a moment of triumph as something grimy. If you’re ambitious or a dreamer, it’s easy to just focus on the goal, the stage, that moment in the spotlight when all eyes are on you. You tune out the noise, ignore your screaming muscles and tired bones, and march toward victory,” says Gray Bouchard
“Who’d you rather be?” Seldom has a simple four-word question demanded such a complex answer. And that’s often due to the point in which the query is posed: In times of triumph, the human ambition yearns for even higher pleasures, seeing the experienced success as just another step towards a greater achievable goal; and in times of despair, our unrelenting ability to ache for what’s not ours acts as an unbearable weight as heavy as the failures in front of us.
Are you rocking with this one?
