Heretic Pride

446. Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

Fan interpretations of “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” got so dark that John Darnielle himself had to correct the record.

Track: “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” is exactly what it says it is in the title. It’s an incident that happens between two people where one of them is wearing a T-shirt for the band Marduk. There are several songs I’d also nominate for this honor, but I think this may be the best jumping off point to discuss John Darnielle’s view of song interpretations. A lot of fans assumed something untoward is happening here, given the person in the T-shirt is a clearly distressed person referenced with female terminology who is in the men’s room during what we are told is an “incident.” John Darnielle went so far as to directly respond to people on the band’s forums to tell them he would never write a song from the perspective of someone who might do what people assume this narrator has done. He added that we don’t know what happened to her, which is, as he said, “kind of the point.”

You bring yourself to every piece of art you consume, but also you should try to meet the art where it is. This is a song about people we must assume are strangers and the source of her distress is unknown to us. That keeps it general in that this could be anything, but the audience interpretation that the author had to strike down shows that people want to fill in the blanks. Something troubling happened here, but it’s less about what that was and more about a chance encounter and how we never really know the full story about the people we happen across in this life.

445. How to Embrace a Swamp Creature

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is a very relatable song, but you have to be willing to admit that.

Track: “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The full quote from this show in San Francisco in 2008 is too long to quote here, but I encourage you to go read it in full on the Mountain Goats Wiki or listen to the show. In summary, John Darnielle says that “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is about going to see someone you used to know on some sort of spurious claim when really you just want to see them again and you probably want one exact thing that you hope you both want. It’s an adolescent emotion, one would hope, but maybe it’s one you remember in your own life. Maybe you’re more honest with yourself, I don’t know. The live show banter discusses going to get an album from someone but then being honest on the idea that “you could go get that song off the internet like the rest of us.” I mention it both because it’s such a great discussion of the idea and because you can hear the crowd reacting and imagining their own version from their past.

There are a few biblical references in “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature,” which is not unheard of in a Mountain Goats song about secrecy and human relationships. The true narrative is right there in the text, though. You don’t need to track anything outside of what you’re hearing. You just need to cleave out the parts that are the narrator pretending to avoid what they’ve decided is inevitable. We often think of our impulses as immediate things, but I love this song because it chases the feeling from the first moment of your day up until you have to decide what you’re willing to tell this person who used to be someone else to you.

444. Autoclave

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“Autoclave” sticks with one powerful metaphor the whole way through and comes out all the better for it.

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

I can’t find any discussion of it, but I’ve always been fascinated by the choice to include a line from the theme from Cheers in a song like “Autoclave.” Here at 400+ entries in this project I think it’s not really necessary that I say I’m willing to give John Darnielle more than a little slack, but I don’t think it’s even required here. If you told me in a vacuum that a song includes “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name” I would be skeptical. I think if this is a bridge too far for you, that’s fine. For me, it works here, largely because the metaphor of the song is so strong.

An autoclave is designed to heat surgical tools to a temperature that will destroy bacteria, but some specific bacteria actually love the dangerous environment. Darnielle said he saw a comparison there to the kind of people he writes about and it’s definitely true. Right before that line from the Cheers theme, Darnielle pictures a narrator that is locked in a single image of themselves over a throne of skulls with piercing noise in the background. Their heart destroys almost everything that it comes in contact with, thus, “Autoclave.”

The performance here is excellent, as well. Annie Clark of St. Vincent adds some guitar and her signature vocals in the background. The band has done this one a few different ways over the years, but the studio version really benefits from those combined vocals. Clark and Darnielle make very different music, but both of them are distinct and specific and both would agree with a metaphor of a normally hostile situation for love.

443. Heretic Pride

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , ,

“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.

442. Sax Rohmer #1

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

After Get Lonely, the Mountain Goats return like a bomb exploding in “Sax Rohmer #1.”

Track: “Sax Rohmer #1”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

Most of the “periods” of the Mountain Goats are imagined. There is an undeniable shift when the band moved away from the home recordings into larger studio sound, but other than that, if you think there is a “change” it’s largely one you’ve decided exists. I’ve talked about it a lot because it really has a huge impact on how you view the band’s music. The way this usually manifests, in my experience, is people set a period where it becomes “new stuff” and then they have feelings about the “new stuff.” Surely this is not an experience unique to the Mountain Goats, but I think it’s an interesting one given the subject matter. John Darnielle has been who he is from the very first tape, though sure, there’s more saxophone now that he’s not one guy recording in a bedroom with his mom interrupting takes.

The first album I heard new was Heretic Pride. I heard a few songs at my first live show in 2007 and I bought the album the day it came out. “Sax Rohmer #1” opens the album and I think you’d have an extremely hard time finding even those hardened old folks who have thoughts about “new stuff” who wouldn’t feel the hair on their arm rise over that final chorus. It’s a remarkable song, polished and full and explosive even with lines like “every moment leads towards its own sad end.”

This song was my first chance to act jaded. It’s such a huge pivot from Get Lonely, at least in energy if not in other ways, but it’s excellent. Even when something surprises you from John Darnielle, it’s worth looking inward first.

317. Sept. 15 1983

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats hold the camera on the final moments of a musician’s death in “Sept. 15 1983.”

Track: “Sept. 15 1983”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“Sept. 15 1983” isn’t the only Mountain Goats song with a date for a title. It isn’t the only song that is about a murder. It isn’t the only song about someone’s last day they lived. It’s just the only one that’s all three of those. It details the murder of Prince Far I, born Michael James Williams, and his death in Jamaica. The accompanying press kit for Heretic Pride describes John Darnielle’s fascination with the nickname “King Cry Cry,” from the musician’s emotional style and how deeply he got into his music.

I’m no expert on the genre, but “Sept. 15 1983” is clearly done in the style it is to pay homage. It’s unique in that way, for a Mountain Goats song, and it grabs your attention on Heretic Pride. The album starts with a few explosions, but other than a break for “In the Craters on the Moon” and “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” it’s mostly a slower affair. Even among songs in a similar vibe, you’ll notice this one. It was a live staple for a bit, surprisingly, and always a welcome song to hear at a show.

What I take away the most is that I didn’t know the story before I heard it, but it still conveys enough. The title suggests strongly this is a true story, and as much as we can know it is one. It’s quite the image and descriptive and specific. No matter how often you hear it, it won’t feel like a murder unless you really focus. It’s more a tribute, even with the great level of detail on a moment no one would want to focus on.

306. San Bernardino

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , ,

“San Bernardino” feels very personal, but one excellent performance shows how even the personal can be shared.

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

We could talk about how John Darnielle once said the characters in “San Bernardino” were some of his favorite characters. We could talk about the track placement, between two fairly explosive songs on Heretic Pride that feel much more connected, somehow, and what it means for this to be between them. We could talk about how this happens in an actual, real place, in a way that even the most specific Mountain Goats songs don’t usually happen in a real place.

That stuff is cool, but I want to talk about this specific performance of “San Bernardino” in May of 2011. I think it’s tough to adhere to John Darnielle’s sometimes-stated-sometimes-not desire that live shows are live shows and if you aren’t there, that specific one wasn’t for you. I doubt he’d feel that way about this one, but whatever the case you really owe it to yourself to see it. John Darnielle gets a few moments in and realizes the crowd is overwhelming. This happens, but the venue and the song mix perfectly here and the crowd reflects back at him so loud that he abandons the mic. He lets the song be the moment they’re all having and says, simply, “awesome.”

I write this in a time when no one has seen the Mountain Goats in person for a very long time because no one can see anyone in person right now. When that time ends, let this performance and this song be the strongest advertisement possible to see John Darnielle and company in person. They aren’t all like this, but when they are and you’re there with other people who took their own journey with “San Bernardino,” enough to even surprise the man who wrote it, you want to be in the room.

305. In the Craters on the Moon

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“In the Craters on the Moon” builds to one explosive moment and then is willing to show you the explosion.

Track: “In the Craters on the Moon”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The first Mountain Goats show I went to was at The Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2007. The good folks at the Mountain Goats wiki have a setlist here and you can even go to Archive.org can listen to it. The most memorable things, now almost fourteen years later, are the multiple versions of “We Bite” and the songs I’d never heard before. Heretic Pride came out a few months later. It was probably possible, through some means, to have heard it by then, but I hadn’t. It was a different time.

“In the Craters on the Moon” is a heavy song. It’s about people who hide from the world and reject help. It’s a common theme in a Goats song, but it usually comes through differently. This one rises until John Darnielle literally yells, as loud as he possibly can. This isn’t totally unheard of, but I think this is probably the go-to version for me. Seeing it live was something else. I don’t want to break the spell of this half-memory by listening to the real thing he said, but he had something at that show in Chicago about going somewhere else during the peak and how you can’t do that on stage.

The Empty Bottle is a weird place. I’ve never seen a show there where the audience was quiet, this one included, but it’s also a place you go to see something you’re passionate about. There are a few hundred live performances of this one and I’m sure most of them involve some form of “going somewhere else.” The lyrics are solid and the beat is great, but it’s all about that yell. It’s terrifying, because that’s how you’d react if someone broke into your stronghold through all your resistances.

251. Toolshed

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle digs into the supposedly hidden message in “Stairway to Heaven” in “Toolshed.”

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

In 1982, a televangelist claimed to have “deciphered” backwards messages in “Stairway to Heaven” that included the line “there was a little toolshed where the sad man made us suffer.” You’re probably familiar with this idea that rock songs have “secret” codes in them when played backwards. Led Zeppelin says it’s not true and you can listen for yourself to see how you feel about it.

The “toolshed” line gave birth to the Mountain Goats song “Toolshed” as a bonus track for Heretic Pride. It’s one of the darkest songs John Darnielle has even written. It seems to imagine what happened to the person who suffered in a little toolshed.

So many Mountain Goats songs speak of danger as something that’s potentially going to happen. There’s a great deal of darkness in the world of John Darnielle’s songs, but it rarely manifests the way it does in “Toolshed.” We don’t get the full answer, but it’s clear that these three characters endured some sort of abuse and were forever changed by it. “Secrets to keep // records to seal up” suggests something very grim, and “kittens weighed down with rocks” really drives the point home.

There’s just enough detail that we feel sick about what we’re imagining. The supposedly hidden message from “Stairway to Heaven” is the entire chorus and it’s odd and suggestive if you believe it exists in that song, but it’s so much more terrifying when you picture the people who experienced whatever happened in that toolshed going back to their lives.

135. Last Man on Earth

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , , ,

The deceptively sweet “Last Man on Earth” plants some fears about your partner for the end of the world.

Track: “Last Man on Earth”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“Last Man on Earth” plays with the idea of the old “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth” threat. The phrase is too common to have just one origin, but we all get that it represents someone expressing the most severe idea they can imagine. Even if confronted with perpetual solitude, they’d rather have nothing than have you. It’s evocative, but it’s also got a finality to it. How could you argue with that?

In this bonus track from the Amazon version of Heretic Pride, John Darnielle imagines how that would really play out. It’s the apocalypse, with “charred debris” and “thirsting demons,” and there may only be two people left. The imagery suggests a ruined world full of dead former friends and lovers, but “Last Man on Earth” has an overwhelmingly bouncy, happy tune. It’s a mixture of ideas John Darnielle might have crafted as a funny song several decades ago, but in 2008 he combines the two pieces to show us a kind of hopefulness. The narrator is determined to prove himself and to earn this love and to make the best of the worst situation.

The final verse deserves some additional discussion. Through the lines “I may have failed you once before // but this right here this means war” we find out that these two have a history. Below the sweet surface lies the suggestion that this isn’t a great outcome for the recipient of this song. The narrator bleeds and drools and has a “crazed look in his eyes.” They clearly imagine themselves as an action hero saving a helpless figure, but that kind of attitude might just be why this person lost interest in them in the first place.