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Gary McClure sneaked his way into the indie rock scene in 2014 through a mysterious project he called American Wrestlers. He self-recorded a few songs under that name on an 8-track tape recorder in St. Louis and sent it to record labels and music bloggers without any hint of who was behind it.
He wasn't exactly trying to build up the enticing man-of-mystery narrative that early reviewers eventually latched onto. He just wanted people to focus more on his music than on him.
"I thought: What would someone want to read in an email from a guy?" McClure said in a recent phone interview. "And I thought, '[Expletive], I would just want to hear it.' "
Eventually the labels started calling, and the music blogs heaped praise on American Wrestlers' jangly power pop over a DIY tape hiss. The self-titled debut came out in 2015 on the Fat Possum label.
Despite the success of his young band (which will play Salt Lake City's Kilby Court on Friday), McClure himself is no newcomer. The Scottish-born musician spent the early 2000s in the Manchester, England, music scene before following his American Wrestlers bandmate, keyboardist Bridgette Imperial, to St. Louis, where they later married.
As he waited for his green card, he found himself with a lot of time on his hands, and that's when the American Wrestlers tapes were born.
"I recently found out I could sing and write songs," McClure said. Before then, he mostly wrote dance-inspired electronic music as half of the Manchester duo Working for a Nuclear Free City.
"The stuff I was doing before was way experimental," he said.
And it wasn't getting as much traction as he would have liked in the crowded Manchester scene.
"Britain … was very exclusive, and a lot of people didn't want to let you in," McClure said. "It's hard to be in a band in England. That was just part of the reason I moved."
It wasn't until he changed his style — and his location — that things started to change.
"Bands over here are welcoming," he said of the St. Louis music scene. "The sky is always blue here, and it just [expletive] blows my mind. It really does."
Now on the heels of American Wrestlers' second album, 2016's "Goodbye Terrible Youth," McClure and his band are on the most expansive tour yet of his new country. This tour will be the first time in his life he has ventured into the American West or the South.
"I don't know if, from one show to the next, if five people are going to show up or if hundreds will show up," he said.
McClure has embraced the sprawling garage rock ethos of American suburbia by channeling the guitar swagger of Big Star and Cheap Trick — with a little bit of synth pop by way of Phoenix thrown in for good measure. After years of trying to ride the waves of experimentation in Manchester, he came to realize he could find his voice in the timeless power-chord rock that inspired him in the first place.
Sometimes allowing himself to embrace simplicity can be the hardest part, he admits.
"You can spend time just [expletive] around and making an overly complex thing — really finding weird angles to go at it," McClure said. "Then you strip it all back and you really listen to what you made in the end, and you just find a [expletive] 'A' chord and a 'G' chord."
His American experience has seen a few more clouds in the sky lately. For a songwriter who describes himself as "creating all the time," the current American political climate has become an overwhelming source of dark inspiration.
"America's really [expletive] up, isn't it?" he said. "Everyone's just talking in dark terms, and it feels like there's just too much to write about."
There are hints of that political bent in "Goodbye Terrible Youth." The first track, "Vote Thatcher," finds him confronting the idea of death in a climate that seems to be overwhelmed by it. McClure, who lives just a few miles away from where Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., sings the grim line: "I can always look to my son to be stoned by policemen," before singing in the song's chorus: "I still can't believe you died."
More than just a commentary on current events, the song is mostly personal.
"['Vote Thatcher'] was also about my obsession with legacy after you die," he said.
Perhaps that's why McClure isn't afraid to admit that he wants people to respond to his music. He's not one to write for himself.
"I can listen to [my own music], and I just feel nothing," he said. "You really can't make yourself feel emotions."
The satisfaction comes when he knows someone else can hear it, too.
Ideally, he says, he'd like to be able to write a record that a 15-year-old version of himself would want to listen to.
"It needs other people to engage with it," McClure said. "Otherwise, it can't live." —
P With Sales & Co.
When • Tonight at 7
Where • Kilby Court, 741 S. Kilby Court, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $10; Ticketfly