By Alex Felsinger
“When the house goes up in flames, nobody emerges triumphantly from it,” sings Mountain Goats mainstay and lyricist John Darnielle, with thundering drums, piano, and cello at his side on the final song of Heretic Pride (4AD). But after their last album, Get Lonely (4AD, 2006), a recording filled with nothing but morose musings on the state of his own life, the Mountain Goats’ floorboards were beginning to warp from the fire building in the basement.
While The Sunset Tree (4AD, 2005) brought mainstream appeal, it too was autobiographical, along with the majority of the preceding album, We Shall All be Healed (4AD, 2004). Darnielle, who constructed a fan base on his vibrantly constructed lyrics telling stories of true-to-life fictional characters, began to lose his magic when the focus of his songwriting for the first time became his own life.
But with Heretic Pride, Darnielle maneuvered his way out of his burning building, and is back – triumphantly, even – to creating the types of characters fans have come to know and love. Lyrically, the full-length takes bits and pieces from the group’s past by revisiting themes. In liner notes, he says the track “So Desperate” is “a love song about people who are together when they probably shouldn’t be” – a description that could match any number of Mountain Goats songs from the past (most notably “No Children,” but also any of the “Alpha” song series that spanned 11 years and various albums).