The Mountain Goats' Heretic Pride

Moby Dick, Foucalt's Pendulum and Cryptonomicon are some of my favorite novels. If you want to read a good book, my recomendation would be to start with those three.

What makes these books so great is how the are nominally about very sepcific subjects: whales, knights Templar and cryptography. But they perversely refuse to adhere to their subject matter. Or perhaps their subject matter can symbolically encompass all things, because these books go all over the place. The reach emotional and intellectual highs (and lows) that boggle the mind and thrill the soul. You can open any one of these books to a random chapter and be knocked down by its 100% pure awesome.

Anyway, that's also how the Mountain Goats make me feel. I got their album Heretic Pride for Christmas and I can't stop listening to it. One minute he's singing about angels guarding the tree of life, the next moment one of Lovecraft's outer gods is threatening to destroy mankind. The album starts with Sax Rohmer and ends with Michael Meyers.

Smart lyrics, powerful emostions and a folk/folk rock sound combine to make a beautiful album. In closing here's the lyrics to title track, "Heretic Pride":

Well they come and pull me from my house
And they drag my body through the streets
And the sun’s so hot I think I’ll catch fire and burn up
in the summer air so moist and sweet

And the people all come out to cheer
Rocks in the pathway break my skin
And there’s honeysuckle on the faint breeze today
With every breath I’m drawing in

I want to cry out but I don’t scream and I don’t shout
And I feel so proud to be alive
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives

Crowds grow denser by the second
As we near the center of the town
And they dig a trench right in the main square right there
And they pick me up and throw me down

And I start laughing like a child
And I mark their faces one by one
Transfiguration's gonna come for me at last
And I will burn hotter than the sun

I waited so long and now I taste jasmine on my tongue
And I feel so proud to be alive
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives