MOUNTAIN GOATS - Heretic Pride

"Mountain Goats records are all the same." In the age of digital-era musical bulimia, this is the verdict most often heard from detractors of John Darnielle. The fact is that the Mountain Goats' story is one made of nuances rather than lines of discontinuity. With each record, a few details are added, the spotlight shifts a step or two, and a new chapter opens in one single ongoing novel.

But the heart of the matter is still the one found on the old cassettes Darnielle used to record in his spartan lo-fi style: the sharp strokes of a guitar accompanying that voice with its cutting emphasis, needing only a few lines to sketch out stories full of evocative detail. New travelling companions have joined along the way, an increasingly organic sound has been built, and layers of ideas and influences have accumulated. And yet the snapshots captured by Mountain Goats don't seem to have lost an ounce of their sincerity.

For those willing not to stop at a first impression, the new Mountain Goats effort reveals itself as woven with a more direct expressiveness than its brooding predecessor "Get Lonely", making "Heretic Pride" one of the most representative moments in the band's discography since signing to 4AD.

Just listen to the squared-off, snappy rhythm of "Sax Rohmer #1" to realize you're facing a new classic from John Darnielle's creation, with the liberating, visceral drive of a chorus that imprints itself on memory instantly: "And I am coming home to you / If it's the last thing that I do". "Heretic Pride" and "Autoclave" are no less striking, vibrant with a momentum somewhere between Neutral Milk Hotel and Go-Betweens. The restless tremor of the guitar on "San Bernardino" lets itself be wrapped in a drape of strings, while "So Desperate" shows itself in all its bare essentiality. If the whole album stayed at this level, we'd be in the territory of the celebrated "The Sunset Tree": instead, the tension loosens somewhat in the second half of the record, redeemed by the delicate, piano-dotted colors of "Tianchi Lake".

Between the whip-crack acoustic guitar and dramatic strings of "In The Craters On The Moon" and the cutting electric riff and driving bass and drums of "Lovecraft In Brooklyn", it's percussion that claims a new centrality in the Mountain Goats' formula. Darnielle surrounds himself with his usual accomplices, from Peter Hughes to Franklin Bruno, joined by old friends like John Vanderslice, who joins Scott Solter on production, along with the voices of the Bright Mountain Choir.

After a series of autobiographical concept records, "Heretic Pride" goes back to painting a gallery of characters drawn from the most disparate worlds, a metaphor for a jumble of feelings and desires: from Chinese spies straight out of the pulp stories of Dr. Fu Manchu, the criminal mastermind born from the pen of Sax Rohmer, to a young couple fleeing through the streets of California with a newborn child; or again, from the mask of Michael Myers, the brutal protagonist of the "Halloween" horror saga, to the ruthless murder of reggae singer Prince Far I.

The glory of defeat sometimes shines more brightly than the appearance of success: the challenge lies in recognizing greatness when everything seems to deny it. "The main theme of the record," Darnielle notes, "is how people can find meaning in the worst situations in life, something capable of bringing joy within a situation that's surely headed for ruin." Just like the protagonist of the title track, who even as he's led to the stake lifts his gaze without letting despair win out: "And I feel so proud to be alive / And I feel so proud to when the reckoning arrives". "I can't help but think this way about people who agree to embrace their own guilt," Darnielle adds.

There's a recurring sense of menace hanging over the songs on "Heretic Pride", from the mysterious Chinese sea monster lurking in the waters of Tianchi Lake to the aliens poised to conquer Earth as imagined by H.P. Lovecraft, the father of American weird fiction. Hope lies in the courage to face every fear with a gaze that never gives in to resignation, tirelessly chasing every glimmer of positivity: even in the muffled pain of the breakup played out in the front seats of a car in "So Desperate", there's always a breath of fresh air ready to rush in through the window to speak of the world out there. A world that keeps flowing like a river toward its destiny. "And then the water sought its course again the way the waters will".

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29/02/2008