Heretic Pride

112. So Desperate

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“So Desperate” freezes the frame on two people doing something taboo without calling it right or wrong.

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

“So Desperate” is about an affair. There are lots of songs in the catalog that are open for debate, but this one is so direct that you can’t miss the subject matter. When introducing songs about infidelity, John Darnielle often makes an appeal to the people in the crowd to think about the situations featured in the song and their personal experience. He doubles down on this in the press kit for Heretic Pride: “Odds are that somebody reading this knows exactly what I mean and feels a little uncomfortable reading about it: 2:1.”

Infidelity is a favorite topic of the Goats, but it’s interesting to see how it’s used. Storytelling across film and literature and everything else uses infidelity as a signal that characters are bad (only bad people cheat) or that love between two people is forbidden and true (they love each other so much they have to cheat) and it’s usually up to the storyteller which of the two motivations is at play. Darnielle doesn’t want to weigh in. These people might feel what they’re doing is wrong, but our only clues in the lyrics are feelings of sadness and the title/chorus: “I felt so desperate in your arms.”

Desperation, like infidelity, seems to be a solely negative thing until you break it down. Darnielle isn’t arguing that this is actually a good situation and that this is love, he’s just asking you to look at a time when you were in this space and see what you think of it. Mountain Goats characters often act selfishly or impulsively, but they aren’t cruel. These lovers are just out here in a car, for now, and whatever else that means back home is for another day.

109. Michael Myers Resplendent

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats consider the man himself and the man playing him in “Michael Myers Resplendent.”

Track: “Michael Myers Resplendent”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

John Darnielle’s personal interests are varied. He loves boxing, professional wrestling, and metal. He’s done a wrestling album and there are a half-dozen songs in the catalog that are directly about boxing. The metal influences can be harder to spot. The trappings of metal (darkness, macabre elements, horror, etc.) are certainly present, but my knowledge of that world only goes so far. I’m not a horror fan and as much as I love the Goats, I can’t get into everything John Darnielle loves the way he can.

The thing is: that’s okay. You don’t need to love wrestling to listen to Beat the Champ. You don’t even need to have seen Halloween II to appreciate “Michael Myers Resplendent.” You just need to know that the slasher gets burned in a house fire. You can handle the rest in your mind.

“Resplendent” means “attractive or impressive through being richly colorful or sumptuous.” It comes from the Latin verb for “to shine” and shares space in our language with “splendid.” It’s a truly fantastic word that doesn’t get used very often. It’s rare that “resplendent” is the exact word you need. It is the exact word for a man ablaze not emerging victorious from something. He’s a force of nature, less a man than an idea, and he’s not the “winner.” John Darnielle wants you to consider the monster in its final moments. Even if you can’t pity this character, you can appreciate that the victory for the other characters has another side.

Darnielle includes enough detail in the song that you can tell it’s about the actor portraying Michael Myers. The song works when just describing the character, but it adds an extra element of sadness given the preparation it takes just to play the doomed monster’s role.

100. Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle channels the dark personality of H. P. Lovecraft more than the monsters in “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.”

Track: “Lovecraft in Brooklyn”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

H. P. Lovecraft is best known for creating the horrific monster Cthulhu and other fictional monster-gods. Even without knowing the man at all you can be assured that his worldview is a dark one. I haven’t read much Lovecraft, but it’s clear that he believes humanity to be inconsequential to the universe. The Old Ones in his stories are hateful, destructive beings that are either unaware of or uninterested in humanity’s desires or future.

Such a person is definitely at home in the Mountain Goats catalog. They’re much angrier than most of the narrators we have, but no less lonely. They’re at the end of their rope, perpetually. But this narrator isn’t Lovecraft himself, they’re just using the author as a parallel to their worldview. They say they “feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which requires that we understand a little about that specific time in the writer’s life.

Some misanthropes hate all of humanity and some hate specific parts of it more than others. Lovecraft is the latter, with specific hatred saved for non-English, white gentlemen. During his time in Brooklyn he was robbed and had a difficult time financially and he blamed his misfortunes on immigrants.

That’s the headspace for our narrator in “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” They’ve set themselves against humanity in all forms. They view blood on the ground and monsters in the darkness of Brooklyn. They even imagine the end of their actual home.

It’s all dark, but it turns darkest towards the end. Our narrator goes to buy a switchblade and tells the pawn shop clerk about evil thoughts. When we see a sketchy stranger this is exactly who we hope it isn’t, but John Darnielle reminds us to look closer.

096. Tianchi Lake

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXGZ17y4Urg

“Tianchi Lake” references a being that’s mythical in our world but seems to be a normal part of the world of the Mountain Goats.

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

The songs on Heretic Pride aren’t really connected. John Darnielle has said that they’re each about an obsession of his and that’s really as much as there is to go off. That isn’t much, but it’s enough for most of these. It’s certainly enough for “Tianchi Lake,” which is directly about a lake monster in China.

In the illustrated press kit that was released alongside Heretic Pride John Darnielle said “depending on whether you believe it or not, this is a true story, sort of.” That sums up the Mountain Goats’ relationship with the world of strange, mythical (maybe!) beasts. In Heaven Lake (or Tianchi) in China there supposedly exists a creature called the Lake Tianchi Monster. Some people report that it resembles a buffalo. Some say it has a human head. Some say that there are six of them and they all have wings.

In Darnielle’s song, it has the “body of a sea lion // head just like a horse.” The song is mostly a description of the lake and the monster, but there’s also an interesting commentary on how people react to it. Lots of our fear of the unknown comes from its nature as the unknown. Maybe you don’t really believe in ghosts or aliens, but maybe when you have thought about them you’ve been uncomfortable. Darnielle’s world allows for more direct interactions. The children, the preacher, and the crowd that see the monster in “Tianchi Lake” have solely positive or neutral reactions with the monster. That’s because they aren’t interacting with what might be, they’re just by a lake that has a known monster in it. The world of the Mountain Goats has monsters, yeah, but they’re less scary if you accept that as fact.

020. New Zion

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

 

The cult of “New Zion” isn’t important, but the way we think of our past selves as other people certainly is.

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

First things first, Heretic Pride is a unique album to talk about because it’s illustrated. John Darnielle wrote descriptions of each song and asked the artist Jeffrey Lewis to illustrate them. It’s one of the most fascinating pieces of Mountain Goats art that exists. The art is spectacular and it’s possibly the most complete discussion of an album in the band’s history.

The source text, then, says “New Zion” is about a cult that doesn’t exist, but it’s also about John Darnielle’s fascination with the way something can consume you the moment you become aware of it. He describes “cultmania” in the illustration and laments that the world has fewer “bizarre screeds” now. The character in “New Zion” has lost their faith but not their people. They remember the flash or the importance of religion and remembers how it all started “like the memory of a movie.” Those days are gone.

As much as the song is about their present in the cult, it’s about the past that they can’t quite summon up. It’s a literal cult, but it’s also the feeling of being fully reborn as a new person with no concept of the old you. As the protagonist says they “dreamed a dream of where I come from” you can imagine the difficulty of recalling a past that they’re supposed to be beyond. The specifics of the cult aren’t important — the song mentions ravens and robes, so you get a general sense — but the general nature of transition is. As with so many Goats songs, “New Zion” talks about how transition is painful whether it’s voluntary or not. They’re waiting for someone to come save them physically, but they’re concerned that it’s too late to save everything else.