REVIEW: The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

What, no concept album? It’s difficult for a diehard Mountain Goats fan to not pose this question after hearing Heretic Pride, the latest album from John Darnielle and company. Darnielle’s been crafting concept albums since 2002’s harrowing Tallahassee, a fictional portrait of bitter middle-aged drunks trying to keep their life together. 2005’s The Sunset Tree is his best effort to date, featuring humbly affecting melodies and heartwrenching lyrics about growing up in an abusive home and dreaming of escape and revenge.

Sadly, The Mountain Goats followed The Sunset Tree a year later with the breakup-themed bummer Get Lonely. The tunes were mostly mellow to the point of stagnation, and if you think it’s hard listening to someone whine about their breakup for 45 minutes imagine it in album form. That’s why the prospect of a non-concept Mountain Goats album held some promise. Darnielle seemed to have run out of truly compelling personal stories on Get Lonely, and Heretic Pride had the potential to be a return to the fascinating short fiction he’s always done well.

It’s true that Heretic Pride’s lyrics live up to expectations. “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” is a detailed character study of a sweaty, zonked-out metal fan that also reveals aspects of the narrator’s life and personality, making it succinct but multifaceted and complete. The stomping, scary “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” features images of “Hubcaps on the cars like funhouse mirrors” and our beloved state of Rhode Island as it “drops into the ocean.” Every song has at least one truly memorable line, from “I am this great unstable mass of blood and foam” in “Autoclave” to “When the scum begins to circle the drain / Everybody loves a winner” in the awesomely named “Michael Myers Resplendent.” We’ve come to expect this level of lyrical prowess from The Mountain Goats, and for some fans it’ll be enough to make the album enjoyable.

However, once considered apart from its lyrics Heretic Pride features some of Darnielle’s worst songwriting yet. One example of this can be found in the intros to “Sax Rohmer #1” and “Autoclave”—separated by only two songs, they’re practically interchangeable with essentially the same starting note and tempo. This sameness pervades the album, and there’s none of the drama that would befit Darnielle’s dramatic lyrics. There’s a sense that you’ve heard all these songs before, albeit with worse lyrics. Darnielle’s proven that he’s capable of writing catchy, powerful tunes, so where the heck are they? Ultimately, Heretic Pride will only satisfy the fans who hang on to Darnielle’s every word while tuning out all the rest.