The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride

by Doug Holschuh
02/22/2008

On the last Mountain Goats' album, Get Lonely (2006), the character in John Darnielle's song "If You See the Light" was fully aware that the villagers were coming soon to bust down his door and drag him away, and he was justifiably afraid, planning to "hide underneath the table in the dining room, knees drawn to [his] chest." Perhaps this was an indicator of Darnielle's read on the political climate of the day, or perhaps it was his own insecurities as he moved the Mountain Goats from a largely solo singer-songwriter act to a full-band. Now two years later, on the title track to the just-released Heretic Pride (4AD), the villagers have come to drag this character to the bonfire, but the character is standing firm with his head held high ("I want to cry out but I don’t scream and I don’t shout / And I feel so proud to be alive / And I feel so proud to when the reckoning arrives"). What a difference two years makes.

Darnielle, the songwriter and for many years the only member of the Mountain Goats, has always sung about heretics and, if not low lifes, those outside the confines of mainstream society. But it is on Heretic Pride that his fascination with monsters and the horrors (of modern American life, of love, of loss) becomes fully voiced, and it is apparent that this is what he's been singing about since the beginning.

But "heretic" for Darnielle could also identify his feelings as he's moved from a largely solo act to the current full-band configuration. Since he first began recording his lo-fi boombox tapes in 1991, Darnielle has written and recording perhaps 400 or more songs as the Mountain Goats (and this is complete guesswork, but it's safe to say he's written more in that time period than anyone other than Robert Pollard). Of these, perhaps 350 are of the highest songwriting quality, even if the recording techniques and the guitar accompaniment were often primitive. It wouldn't be a hard argument to make that he is the premiere songwriter of the indie generation and our best currently active songwriter.

Perhaps that was what made his post-Tallahassee (2002) output that troublesome. Up until and including Tallahassee, Darnielle generally sang songs that were stories about people other than himself. It's not as if he never sang a song from his own point of view, and I would have to think that a song like "Golden Boy," an early song released on the Ghana (2002) compilation, about his love of a brand of Asian peanuts (and how that figures into the afterlife) came from a true, personal love of the product. However, most of his output came across as modern-day Woody Guthrie Dustbowl Ballads, where, instead of singing about down-and-out Okies, he sang about modern-day equivalents -- people trodden down by the culture in which they find themselves living, such as the high-school running back busted for drugs or the kids whose parents dashed their hopes for fame and glory as a death-metal band, or any of the other beautiful losers on his masterful All Hail West Texas (2002). His songs found beauty and redemption in the small details of everyday life, and were sung with an indelible quirkiness and empathy that kept the listener from drowning in the sorrows he documented.

All that changed with the recording of his next three albums, We Shall All Be Healed (2004), The Sunset Tree (2005), and Get Lonely (2006), where he turned inward and began to sings songs about his own life -- his stepfather, his breakups, his loves and hurts. It was harrowing stuff, and the sound as well as the content was changing, with the songs become longer and arguably better developed, his voice become more hushed, and the instrumentation more elaborate and generally quieter. Powerful and beautiful music in its own way, and when it worked, such as on Get Lonely's "Almost New," the results were devastating. However, in his personal turn and his growing musical maturity, the lo-fi warmth of his voice and the humor and quirkiness of his early material was lost as the music became more produced and as he brought on more musicians to play with him.

At first listen, Heretic Pride follows up on the sound he developed on these last three albums, but it soon becomes apparent that Darnielle is once again writing from character and that the "I" in the songs is not him. More importantly, perhaps, the edge has returned to his music, both in songwriting and playing. Heretic Pride rocks in a way that few Mountain Goats albums have before, and songs like "Sax Rohmer #1" and especially "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" (with it's driving rhythm section) feature a full band rocking out to songs that really wouldn't play well on solo acoustic guitar. Even quieter songs, such as the album standout "San Bernardino" with the music being supplied almost exclusively from Erik Friedlander's cello, are so well thought out instrumentally that it's hard to imagine Darnielle's orginal acoustic-guitar demo.

The idea of monsters and America's fear of the Other (as well as Darnielle's embrace of and identification with these same monsters) plays a strong role on this album, with references to monsters of previous eras in "Sax Roehmer #1," which is named for the pulp writer who created the yellow-scare era Fu Manchu; thoughts on alienation and fear through channeling H.P. Lovecraft ("Lovecraft in Brooklyn"), whose fear of the large influx of European immigrants while living in Brooklyn led to some of his most horrific fiction. "Tianchi Lake" shows Darnielle's great empathy for these monsters as he basically sings a love song to a "real life" lake monster that supposedly lives in China. "How to Embrace a Swamp Monster" and "Michael Myers Resplendent" and "Heretic Pride" continue this trend of monsters and horror, and throughout you find the narrators of the songs struggling with the idea of who the monsters actually are -- the narrator or the Other (whether that other is villagers or a former lover).

In the late 80s and early 90s, Bob Dylan released several questionable albums with songs filled with child-like rhymes and covers of old blues and folk tunes. It was only years later that it became evident that these failed experiments and awkward attempts were all part of a larger plan to transition his song writing to a new phase, and on albums such as Love and Theft and Modern Times, he successfully merged this new rhyming sense, singing style, and old-time music into one of his best albums in decades. The late 80s and early 90s were a phase from which Dylan was able to emerge reborn and rejuvenated.

It took Dylan a decade to work through this phase, but indie music moves faster than that and Darnielle writes more than that, and he's moved through a transitional phase and emerged in just four years. I'm not sure he's completely there yet, but on Heretic Pride, the Mountain Goats have crafted an album that pulls the lesson learned on their last few albums and merged it with the tone and topics of their earlier work. Darnielle has said that he's aware that there are a number of his fans who think that his old stuff is the best he's ever done, but that as an artist, he can't think that way. Heretic Pride still isn't the album I'd use to introduce someone to the band (that honor would still go to All Hail West Texas or Tallahassee, depending on the person's tolerance for lo-fi aesthetics), but it's on heavy rotation at the moment, and it has me eagerly awaiting what's coming next.