John Darnielle hasn't been gifted with a great
voice or a particularly notable ear for melody; his strength is words, which he
crafts with the flair of a novelist and the intensely personal touch of a
committed diarist. Darnielle poured himself into the last two Mountain Goats
albums, 2005's The Sunset Tree and 2006's Get Lonely, offering emotionally
overpowering accounts of, respectively, growing up with an abusive stepfather
and picking up the pieces of his life after a failed romantic relationship. Where
those records were like novellas, Heretic Pride is a collection of short
stories with nothing connecting them except Darnielle's nasal delivery and
driving acoustic guitar. Without the gripping autobiographical elements of
recent Mountain Goats releases (or the tape hiss of the band's lo-fi days) to
justify them, Darnielle's idiosyncratic, occasionally annoying vocals and
elementary folk melodies fall a little flat. As a collection of words, Heretic
is great:
Richly detailed songs like "Lovecraft In Brooklyn" (packed with potent visual
references like "some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey asking me for a cigarette")
and "Sept. 15 1983" (a remembrance of '70s reggae singer Prince Far I) play
amazingly well on paper, but they could use a stronger interpreter at the
microphone.