The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride
Eventually, someone is going to figure out that my distaste for lo-fi recordings could possibly be a farce and question me on it because last year I thoroughly enjoyed Iron & Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog, and now comes this 2008 release by the quintessential king of lo-fidelity John Darnielle and his alter-ego known as The Mountain Goats. Honestly, I do not purposely buy lo-fi music, but, somehow, a diamond-in-the-rough band of said subgenre sneaks into my collection, and I have to admit I do like it. Case in point, The Mountain Goats current release, Heretic Pride. Yes, this is lo-fi, but lo-fi in the same sense as Iron & Wine’s 2007 release, The Shepherd’s Dog. The song structures are simplistic enough to still be labeled lo-fi; yet, the recording is professional enough to be considered hi-fi and maybe that is why I actually like this album—it has glimmer that does not blind you by its light.
This is an album that all of us born under the sign of Libra will find a pleasure because it is such a fine balance between the sacredness of a sympathetic life and the profanity of a karmic life. From the opening notes of “Sax Rohmer #1” to the closing melodies of “Michael Myers Resplendent,” the songs’ ingenious lyrics and compositional nakedness exposes and espouses unflinching guilt and pleasures simultaneously that follows no known religious doctrine—I have never felt so good about feeling so bad until I listened to this album—if masturbation will make you blind, Heretic Pride will make you deaf. If masturbation will make hair grow on your palms, The Mountain Goats will make hair grow on your ears. By the way, that reminds me, I need to get my back waxed.
