mountain goats by marie

A Week With The Mountain Goats' "Heretic Pride": Day 3

25 February 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Walt Carlson // Illustration by Marie Tribouilloy

In the great land that is the Mountain Goats, divided as it is by the river of All Hail West Texas — with plains of rustling stereo-analogue on one side and here with fertile valleys rich with whole fields of drums, hi-hats, and the breeze of full production easing through the grass on the other — Heretic Pride is somewhere in one of the darker forests, creeping up to the coastline.

It’s no interloper on this side of the continent; clothed as it is in the production we’ve come to expect from later recordings, its pockets full of tricks absent or not wholly developed previously; but what sets it apart is its darkness, the hard line toward oblivion and desperation it draws along its wake.

I’ve said Heretic Pride is more obvious in its hauntedness, that the monsters both within and without Darnielle’s characters are more definite in shape and scope, and that’s true.

But what I’ve spent very little space on is the fact that along with the ghosts and monsters, there comes also a synth here, a cello there, an extra drum beat rolling on the floor. It’s hard to say, exactly, what these extra elements do for the recording, but the initial sensation is one of encroaching wholeness. They don’t damage anything, they just tweak the equation in ways we, the listeners, didn’t quite anticipate or were afraid of what the effect may be. Like the pathways his characters cannot leave, such changes are inevitable.

Chart it from “Taboo VI,” pay attention to the transitions, the liner notes, the backing players. You can do this at home. By the time you reach “Heretic Pride,” you just might be as desperate as the people Darnielle sings about; as aware of your own monsters as they are of theirs.

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