“Heretic Pride” is a triumphant, defiant shout back at a world that doesn’t understand you.

Track: “Heretic Pride”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

It’s really crazy to revisit Heretic Pride many years later. My instinct is to say that people didn’t hold it in high enough regard, but I think I’m telling on myself by saying that. Contemporary reviews show that people loved it immediately, as they did most other albums from the period. It’s in between Get Lonely and The Life of the World to Come, two definitely slower and maybe less accessible albums, but the Mountain Goats haven’t really had an album in their modern history that wasn’t loved by critics. I talked about this in the post for “Sax Rohmer #1,” but Heretic Pride the album represents a shift for me as it’s the first album I heard new. I still remember that opening run of the first song exploding, a downshift for “San Bernardino” into familiar Mountain Goats territory, and then the return here for the title track.

“Heretic Pride” is a live show staple now and has been consistently since 2008. It’s truly excellent and it’s a great scream-along, but it also encapsulates what a lot of people want from the band conceptually. The album Heretic Pride is all about people outside the norm and the song “Heretic Pride” is about a specific one screaming into the crowd that wants them dead. “I feel so proud to be alive” is a line a lot of bands could write, but “and I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives” is a Mountain Goats ending. I’ve heard so many live versions of this the live affectations line changing “one by one” to “one by one by one by one” are imprinted on how I sing the song in my head. This one’s for everyone and it’s excellent to hear it in that setting.