With a new album, Heretic Pride, out this week, the
Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle takes a break from his role as
indie rock’s premier songwriter to discuss the albatross of “lo-fi,”
the Lord above, and his fondness for South American metal.
MERCURY: Do you still get pegged as “lo-fi” even though it’s been years
and albums since you recorded to cassette? If so, does that bother
you?
Let me answer this question with a question: Have you ever dreamt of
getting your dishes done and lawn mowed by a singer/songwriter dude?
Because I will do it [rather than be pegged with that label ever
again]. Because yes, people persist in calling our records “lo-fi.” I
spent all my home recording years pointing out that “lo-fi” was a
really stupid term, and then we went into a studio and recorded
Tallahassee and we thought, “Wow, this sounds quite different.”
But still, I could show you reviews that called that album “lower than
lo-fi.” It happens every album, and it’s been eight years since I
released anything recorded on
a boombox.
There’s a lot of religion around the edges of your work. Is that
something that plays a role in your life?
I consider myself religious—I’m Catholic, both by blood and by
tendency, and I mean “religious” in the sense of the word that
occasionally makes Protestants uncomfortable: I like ritual and
repetitive prayers, and I think a communal relationship with God is
many orders of magnitude more important than “a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ.”
At the same time, though, I’m in the same boat that everybody else
is in: In my heart, I doubt there’s a God at all. Most of what most
religions teach is utterly ridiculous, and besides, I’m a pro-choice
feminist, so the church that I love… is also my enemy.
What music are you digging right now?
I’ve been listening to heavy metal all day, a Colombian black metal
band called Utuk Xul. Then I listened to the new one by Epoch of
Unlight, which I have mixed feelings about, because the whole thrash
revival is kind of weird, but every album you hear from it has at least
one or two really solid jams. I don’t know, though, I think retro is
always a bad move for any genre.