The Mountain Goats
Heretic Pride
4AD Records
By Kevin Hakansson
In the music business, endurance is an important thing: the list of bands and solo artists who fade away quicker than their talent level indicates is literally endless. Don't add Mountain Goats to that list though. The "group," long a collaborative assembled around guitar/vocalist John Darnielle, has been around in some form since the early nineties, and isn't showing any signs of giving in or slowing the rapid fire level of album and song production that the band has shown.
Heretic Pride, Mountain Goats' fifth full-length release with 4AD, is the band's 11th LP since 1994. For you non-math majors, that's practically one a year (well, something like two every three years. You get the point). The numbers are impressive, yes, but what's even more impressive is the fact that the quality of the releases has yet to suffer. Each selection on Heretic has a life of it's own, due largely in part to the setting in which Darnielle penned the songs. The record was conceived of all over the world, in the greatest variety of places. While the triumphant opener "Saw Rohmer #1" was written in what Darnielle describes as his "cave-like office" in Durham, NC, the bouncy "Autoclave" was the result of some reading the prolific songwriter was doing in Fairbanks, Alaska of all places. Other tunes came from sessions in Stockholm, Seattle and San Francisco; this knowledge adds to the troubadour feel that, even without such a tidbit, prevails throughout.
While Darnielle is most assuredly the kingpin in this operation, Heretic Pride is no one-man operation. Peter Hughes, Darnielle's longtime partner in crime, fills his usual bass guitar position, while producer John Vanderslice, a prolific solo artist in his own right, adds some tasty synth lines. And while there a myriad of other fingerprints on this record, the greatest contribution seems to have come from Erik Friedlander. "San Bernardino," though originally penned by Darnielle, is all Friedlander. "I wrote it on guitar, sent it to Erik Friedlander for arrangement," Darnielle says. "Is it too self-serving to say how much I love what Erik does here?" Indeed, it's not. Darnielle provides only the lead vocal, with Friedlander providing an orchestra's worth of string accompaniment. That's not the last we hear of him, either. The tense "Craters on the Moon" is driven by the suspenseful string backing, while "Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident" is again helped by Friedlander's subtle arrangement.
All that being said, it's hard to ignore the man that without whom there would be no Mountain Goats. While Darnielle's howl can be a bit shrill at times, there's no denying the beauty of his songwriting and the power of his storytelling. He certainly has a penchant for both here. Darnielle writes about horror author H.P. Lovecraft's migration to the outskirts of New York City in the appropriately titled "Lovecraft in Brooklyn." Later, he mourns the death of reggae icon Prince Far I in "September 15 1983," the date of the Prince's death. There's substance to the songs that tell these stories, too; "Tianchi Lake," the tale of a lake monster in China, is somewhat ironically a hushed, delicate lullaby.
After so many years, it's natural to wonder when a group like Mountain Goats might give up, Darnielle retiring to a more private life. But judging from the release of those 11 albums (not to mention dozens of singles, compilations, and other odds and ends) and the relentless tour schedule that Darnielle and Hughes have maintained for the last decade, it doesn't seem that such a time will come any time soon. But hey, maybe they'll actually take a little time off before releasing the next album. On second thought, don't bet on it.
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