mountain goats by marie

A Week With The Mountain Goats' "Heretic Pride": Day 1

19 February 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Walt Carlson // Illustration by Marie Tribouilloy

A piece about the album’s first single, “Sax Rohmer #1”:
The song begins easily enough. There is fog, there are people, a harbor, dawn. There is a sense of decay in the broken bricks and the signs on some unnamed path. John Darnielle’s acoustic guitar is making steady, diligent time like a trusted friend. Then things, as things so often do, take a turn for the worse. There are spies washing in with the tide; and although Darnielle never really lets us know, they’re probably dead. Their fingers are probably useless to them now, half-submerged in saltwater, scraping along the sand. All hell breaks loose.

The drums, which had been there before, but as background, as clouds drifting across the sky, clatter down around us. We are, really, truly, absolutely, in trouble. When Darnielle lets loose with the revelation “I am coming home to you/ with my own blood in my mouth” you know it’s just because he’s tired, it’s just because he’s breathing hard and he’s desperate, but when he sings that he’s coming home to you if it’s the last thing that he does, you’re not sure if you should turn on the porch light or lock the door.
When he assures you that every moment leads toward its own sad end, it doesn’t make you feel much better; but then again, the Mountain Goats have never been ones to hold your hand. They urge you to put your hand into the dark. To look into the mirror even if you’re afraid. John Darnielle is ready to follow these moments to their ends, these roads to their blocked intersections and he wants you to come with him.

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