lovecraft

305. In the Craters on the Moon

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eZWFRgZtro

“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.

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.