by Nathan Goldman

Created on: May 10, 2009

First things first: John Darnielle is probably my favorite songwriter. I generally hesitate to use the word 'favorite' in the literal sense ("This is my favorite song!" or "This is the greatest song ever written!" usually means "I am loving this song so much at this exact moment!" or "This is pretty neat!" or "This is better than silence!") and I may reread this in a few weeks and wish I had ranked Darnielle second or third or fourth on my list of favorites. Regardless, I love John Darnielle. I want to marry him and have his babies and worship the ground upon which he walks, etc., etc. He's good.

Heretic Pride is, in many ways, a return to form for The Mountain Goats. The 'band' started out as John Darnielle's project while he worked as a nurse in the early 90s. In those days, The Mountain Goats were about as lo-fi as it gets - John made the first few (thousand) albums by recording his untrained, nasal voice and an acoustic guitar with an old boom box, which provided the band's third instrument: tape hiss. If you're used to modern hi-fi production, listening to old Mountain Goats albums can be kind of a shock (though if you're a Guided By Voices junkie, you may find them pristine in comparison.) In the old days, Darnielle's songs were very atypical of the man-and-an-acoustic-guitar genre: they were rarely personal, usually consisting of stories he made up, and contained a lot of literary allusions that make his listeners feel very smart indeed. His songs were also uniqu, in their intense passion and energy (I'd like to take this time to point out that "Going to Georgia" is the greatest song ever written [see parenthetical in paragraph one.])

The Mountain Goats never did lose that energy, but they did lose the lo-fidelity with 2002's Tallahassee, much to the dismay of Mountain Goats purists. Next went the focus on fiction: Darnielle's next three albums were largely (if not exclusively) autobiographical, focusing on his childhood drug addict friends (We Shall All Be Healed,) his abusive stepfather (The Sunset Tree), and relationships that, presumably, ended rather badly (Get Lonely.) Personally, I didn't mind this at all. Turns out that Darnielle has led a fascinating and rather tragic life, and his decision to finally draw from it led to some of his best songs ever (see "Dance Music", "This Year", "Woke Up New.")

But with Heretic Pride, it's back to storytelling! Darnielle's still singing in the first person, but now through the eyes of others, and with a

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>