The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride - 2008
This review was originally presented in Shuffleboil.
In “San Bernadino,” the second track on The Mountain Goats’ new album “Heretic Pride,” John Darnielle sings, “We got in your car and we hit the highway.” A simple line that, through the economy of language that is Darnielle’s specialty, gives away the entire relationship of the couple that has pulled off the side of the road to park at the motel and have their baby in bathtub. A married couple shares their cars. Single people own their own vehicles. It’s her car. It’s their baby. They aren’t married. And they “will never be alone, no matter what they say, [they’re] gonna be okay.” We believe him. Everything will work out just fine. It’s an optimistic piece to say the least. And it embodies everything that is great about The Mountain Goats.
The economy of language. The true power lies in the nuance. God is in the details. Most singer songwriters never get this. Most poets hide behind veils of symbolism and simile. John Darnielle inhabits his subjects and conveys their essences with just a turn of phrase, a specific pronoun, a descriptive Marcus Allen t-shirt. The album’s title is taken from one of the best tracks and in his press release/comic Darnielle makes a point to let us know that the heretic who is empowered by the “reckoning”, emboldened by his martyrdom, strengthened by his physical abuses, dies shortly after the song ends. The author is god to his creations and takes glee and pride in knowing that their lives don’t just begin at the first drum beat and end at the fade out. His characters pre-exist and post-exist in this universe that is The Mountain Goats.
That Darnielle is a master of the music-as-novella is not new information. The “alpha” characters who have been chronicled over the years in various songs and then as the main protagonists of “Tallahassee,” the first album The Goats did for 4AD, are fully formed, constantly evolving people who Darnielle keeps coming back to. Keeps writing about. They are, however, fiction. Making the colossal nature of the work that much more spellbinding.
There isn’t a substandard moment on “Heretic Pride”, though some have felt that it isn’t as focused as “Tallahasee” or “The Sunset Tree”. It doesn’t have a song as shattering as Get Lonely’s “Woke Up New” A MUST download track for everyone who has ever lost someone through breakup or death. This album is more of a collection of songs.
Like “Autoclave,” an urgent and ironically folky retro new wave throwback about a person who is so incapable of love that his heart acts as a dentist’s autoclave, destroying any emotion that comes near it.
Or my personal favorite (of the moment), “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” In the case of that song, it isn’t a depiction of the famed horror writer who moved to Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved only to find himself more xenophobic and racist than before. Rather it’s how the main character of the song describes his own feeling of xenophobia and racism. He feels “like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” Darnielle is nothing if not literate. This is Indie rock of a different sort. In a way, John Darnielle (The only real member of The Mountain Goats) is really an heir apparent to Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen of Yore. When his songs were populated by “the magic rat” or “Wendy” or “Mary” or “The Saint in the City.” Springsteen fans have long lamented that the songs filled with stories of fictional characters through whom we could relate our own lives have given way to solid rockers and a more expansive worldview. Darnielle has remained true to his canon of characters. Creating new ones along the way, he inhabits these people, these works of fiction and, almost never does it feel confessional. Except that he is so true to his subjects that they almost always seem confessional. That is some great writing.
As a whole, “Heretic Pride” is a terrific and rewarding album. It only gets richer with each listen. And, as for a place to start listening to The Mountain Goats (who have some 14 albums to their name dating back to 1991), there really is no better place to start.
Grade: A
ASide: Sax Rohmer #1, Heretic Pride, So Desperate, Michael Myers Respendent
BlindSide: San Bernardino, Autoclave, Lovecraft in Brooklyn, Sept 15th 1983,
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