Pasa Tempos Music by the Mountain Goats and Jakob Bro

Beat the Champ (Merge Records) Songwriter John Darnielle and his band, the Mountain Goats, are at their best when framing a collection of songs around a particular idea. Their finest albums are autobiographical (The Sunset Tree), feature story sketches joined by a loose narrative (Tallahassee), or are centered on common themes (The Life of the

World to Come). The band’s latest album is based on a killer concept: professional wrestling. These sharply delineated fables focus on one-time grapplers and the lore surrounding them, conveyed with a range of melodic and instrumental approaches that give them the dramatic flow of a Broadway musical. Darnielle generates folklike myth-making with “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” and “The Ballad of Bull Ramos.” He makes use of wrestling-world tropes to relay insights into humans in conflict, whether they have reached a breaking point — turning from good to evil — as in “Heel Turn 2” or are contemplating the emasculation that would come from revealing an opponent’s true self to the world, as in “Unmasked!” For Darnielle, wrestling is more than a pastime. He had a troubled childhood, and here he pays loving homage to the escape that the fantasy of wrestling meant to him as a kid, imagining what the fantasy meant to the men involved. Informing it all is a nostalgic air of glory days gone by, painted in bold brushstrokes that are larger than life, just like the sport itself. — Robert Ker

JAKOB BRO Gefion (ECM) Named for a Norse goddess of virginity and plowing, guitarist Jakob Bro’s Gefion is less mythic, industrious, and untouched than its title suggests. Bro is a sort of slow-hand Bill Frisell (not so quick-handed himself), his sound shimmering with enough twang and bristle to keep it interesting. His resonating electric ways are less backwoods than Frisell’s and more Euro-cosmopolitan, his airy chords and misty phrasing coming in tunes both considered and cool. Bro, heard on the late drummer Paul Motian’s Garden of Eden, draws out the same ethereal, patternless percussion from Jon Christensen that Motian stirred into that 2004 date — the sort of subtle-school drumming that enlivens even the most drawn-out moments. In one of the more upbeat numbers, “Ending,” Christensen creates a sort of unpredictable slapdash that propels the music forward at a stumble pace. Bassist Thomas Morgan provides thoughtful, harmonic contrasts that support Bro’s considered chords. He traces Bro’s gray guitar lines on “Oktober” in a shadowy unison and takes to a brisk canter on “And They All Came Marching Out of the Woods,” a piece that seems less a march than a horseback ride. Bro’s warmest, most melodic moments come on “Copenhagen,” a place that’s provided its share of musical inspiration. One might wish for more sizzle and volume from the guitarist, along the lines of what he’s shown when touring with trumpeter Tomasz Stan´ko. Next time? — Bill Kohlhaase