Atrist: The Mountain Goats | Album: Heretic Pride | Music Review

Summary: The Mountain Goats have made and a potential album of the year that will please old fans and mainstream music fans alike.
I think I know my album of the year, and it's only February. For one thing, The Mountain Goats are one of the few bands around today that understand lyrics. Sure, plenty of bands have great lyrics, but The Mountain Goats understand that lyrics can tell a story. If Patti Smith is a poet who happened to be in a band, the John Darnielle is a fiction writer who happened to own a boom box and blank tapes.



I did not have high hopes for Heretic Pride. The Mountain Goats' 2006 album, Get Lonely, was their worst album to date, and I had a fear that Darnielle might have lost his touch. Thankfully, Darnielle and Peter Hughes are back in full force with Heretic Pride.



I saw The Mountain Goats last December at Union Chapel, and, no pun intended, it was a religious experience. Only a week or two before, they had announced the upcoming release of Heretic Pride on their Web site. At that show, they played the title track. When the song was finished and the crowd began to cheer, Darnielle was beaming and hopping up and down. I think it was the first time they played the song live. The only time I saw Darnielle more excited and intense that evening was when Eddie Argos from Art Brut came on stage to sing with him. From that one song, I could tell that the record was going to be a hit.



When I listened to Heretic Pride for the first time, I was in awe. This was a new The Mountain Goats. Until 2001, The Mountain Goats recorded with a boom box, but when they switched to a full recording studio, they only seemed to be experimenting with what they could do. Most tracks still just included Darnielle, Hughes and a studio drummer. On Heretic Pride, they have finally learned to fully utilize a proper recording studio and a full band. The result is a much more mainstream sound that doesn't sacrifice anything from their old sound. The album was produced by the masterful John Vanderslice, and it is likely that he is responsible for a lot of their new sound.



The Mountain Goats are not some fancy experimental group though: just good, old-fashioned folk and rock. And with this album, they may have made a sound that will be accessible to a mainstream audience as well as old fans. Darnielle's voice and lyrics are as good (or better than) ever. He can strike genuine fear and paranoia into the listener with only a line or two (“Lovecraft In Brooklyn”) and then bring them to a zen-like calm on the very next track (“Tianchi Lake”).



Of course, if I have one negative thing to say about this album, it is that just as it can be argued that Tom Waits uses superior lyrics to make up for a unique voice, Darnielle has to use his voice and lyrics to make up for instrumentals that can sound uninspired.



In addition, a few tracks seem out of place. “So Desperate” and “Tianchi Lake” sound a lot like a few songs on their last album, Get Lonely. Also, “Autoclave” is a great song, but it sounds like it belongs on the album that Darnielle and Vanderslice have been planning making as a collaboration.



I like all but one of the tracks on Heretic Pride, and most are fantastic. Some of the highlights include the first single and album opener, “Sax Rohmer #1,” and fan favorite “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” The title track is certainly reminiscent of a calmer The Mountain Goats such that it would probably fit in nicely on their 2005 album The Sunset Tree. The songs on Heretic Pride are not “growers,” and listeners will get immediate satisfaction from most of them.



Heretic Pride is the perfect introduction to music that isn't played on Virgin Radio or BBC1. In particular, fans of Bright Eyes, Neutral Milk Hotel and maybe even Sufjan Stevens should, at the very least, give The Mountain Goats a listen.