1. Sax Rohmer #1

However quietly, the shadow that has been cast by the full-bandedness of the Mountain Goats' previous four albums (Tallahassee, We Shall All be Healed, The Sunset Tree, and Get Lonely) finally emerges into the fullness of the day at the beginning of Heretic Pride's first track:

The album starts with a four count of drumsticks.

This is no small statement from a band whose previous 15 albums(!!!!!!!!) were almost entirely lowest-fi acoustic affairs, with Darnielle belting his particularly genial brand of human misery over it all. It almost slips by you, too, which is the first indication of the strength of the arrangements on the album. On Heretic Pride, The Mountain Goats appear to have actually turned into a band, and what's more notable is the fact that it works so naturally that it actually takes a few listens to even notice.

From the first lyrics that follow those four clicks, "Sax Rohmer #1" is an enormous, nightmarishly anxious song. Everything is distorted to inhuman proportions--from the threat of Imperial spies, to colossal machinery miserably decaying; from chalk marks that seem to imply some deeply paranoidal dead drop, to nature taking its course as predators swoop in on their tiny, helpless prey. The classic story of coming home ("if it's the last thing that I do") culminates in what is one of the most strangely powerful visuals that the strangely powerful band has ever written: "All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection." As unreal and untrue as the events are, they nonetheless feel remarkably real, terribly true, tangible and frightening.

One of the most striking themes both in "Sax Rohmer," as well as the rest of the album, is the futility of violence and how this stands in for a futility of larger action. There is no mistaking the violence and struggle at the heart of the song, but there is simply never a winner. "Every battle heads towards surrender on both sides," Darnielle insists, hideously. Even as he returns to whoever is waiting for him at home, he has his "own blood" in his mouth--implying more a shocked sucker-punch than a successful fight of any kind. But there is also no "enemy" of the song. It is the story of battles, wars, spies, and blood, all without a knowable opponent. The mystery and horror of this feeling implies the later track "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" (also about a xenophobic genre author), and is best evidenced by the fact that "Sax Rohmer #1" is bookended by the lyrics: "an agent crests the shadows." Somewhere out there something has power, something has agency, but all we can see is the movement of shadows in distant alleys.

For anyone else this would be all that is needed to shake at least a few sturdy listeners, but, oddly enough, this is all territory that Darnielle has been pacing around in for some time. What makes it different this time is how boiled down the lyrics feel, and how tight and propulsive the arrangement is. All of the groaners are gone (no horribly twee lines like: "our love is like the border between Greece and and Albania;" no half-thoughts like: "I wanna say I'm sorry / for stuff I haven't done yet") leaving almost nothing but choking terror. And instead of pick-on-crappy-strings percussion (something I do quite like), we are surrounded by the huge crashing of cymbals in the song's post-chorus, hammering home the desperation of Darnielle's fever dream. The Ennio Morricone guitar riff in the second verse lends the whole thing a sense that there really is danger lurking around the corner--while still pushing the song's heart-thumping melodicism--and the tinkling-down-the-major-scale riff builds that ball in the throat as we struggle through the scenery.

"Sax Rohmer" manages to lay the foundation for all the coming themes of the album: alienation, hopelessness, the futility of violence, the creation of monsters, and the results of creating such monsters. And to top it all off, the song fucking rips.