mountain goats by marie

A Week With The Mountain Goats' "Heretic Pride": Day 5

4 March 2008
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Walt Carlson // Illustration by Marie Tribouilloy

Looking at Heretic Pride as it shrinks into that unreachable horizon line, I’m surprised that all I can think of is blue sky and some clouds, the hum of an airplane’s engines.

Back on the ground, I was fascinated by the minutiae of the album: how the bass line rested against this tree or how voices would come from beneath those rocks or that haunted house, late, with its desperate men and tired women, a bit of light spilling from under its door.

It’s a remarkable album, of course. There are songs on it I’d like to hear live, if only to hear how their tone shifts when it is just J. Darnielle and his guitar and the audience, waiting.

I have never been to a Mountain Goats show, but I’ve been to Claremont; I walked downtown in the early evening, after it had rained, and tried to picture it smaller: the town how it might have been when John Darnielle was a child, without all of the new buildings or that stop sign. Both train tracks would have been there. And during that early evening, with the sun hazy behind the thinning clouds, the trains came through at the same time, enormous and loud like the voice of God was raining upon the streets and handing out prophecies and visions. I tried to imagine what it would be like growing up with such a force propelling a little part of the day onward, and couldn’t. Then it was quiet, people continued to go about their own business, and I was still walking; but I made a note of the noise and tried to think of it more often.

In the end, fire will follow its course, people will tumble down their own paths, and, I’m sure, The Mountain Goats will still be there, chronicling it all.

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