The Mountain Goats: Satanic Messiah EP
Darnielle's Latest EP Contains Four new Points of Light
Oct 23, 2008
Mountain Goats fans will find similar lyrical hues of paranoia and desperation in each of the tracks on Satanic Messiah as well as Darnielle's familiar concerns such as International Black Metal, African people’s revolutions, the healing power of music and the paranoid ramblings of an isolated wanderer, although not necessarily in that order.
John Darnielle hides behind a series of “I”s of recurring characters and familiar narrative tropes in his songs, from the Alpha couple whose story line ended tragically on 2003’s Tallahassee to the house full of junkies on We Shall All Be Healed, Darnielle’s voice is always in the forefront, speaking “their” words.
Though two of his greatest albums, The Sunset Tree and Get Lonely, marked a break from this abstract method of songwriting, taking a more internal approach which involved an unsteady merger of the personal and the artistic, with this year’s LP Heretic Pride, Darnielle has signaled his return to the abstract distant narrative and his method of character embodiment.
Satanic Messiah, Darnielle’s latest, is a limited edition EP (only 666 copies, of course) and can be seen an appendix to Heretic Pride in both its themes - paranoia, desperation, isolation, transfiguration - and its narrative distance.
Sarcofago Live
The “we” in the song, “hungry (with) no food...eyes up at you,” are a group of desperate Sarcofago (for the uninitiated, a seminal Brazilian Black Metal band) fans, awaiting the transcendent performance “in a small room in Brazil.” The sense at the heart of the song is of a congregant awaiting the coming eschaton, “feeling the full brunt of the age” as they do.
Wizard Buys a Hat
The second track assumes a similar perspective to that of Heretic Pride’s “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” a song written from the viewpoint of a xenophobic wanderer who feels nothing but terror for the oppressive otherness of everyone around him. On “Wizard Buys a Hat” the narrator sees the city as a “church” and the others as “the congregants/the enemy.”
Satanic Messiah
The subjects in “Satanic Messiah” aren’t terribly different from the Sarcofago fans other than their lack of specificity. They are similarly transformed by their concert-going experience, “made young when he stepped onto the stage.” Here the singer is heralded by “the prophets” as a miracle worker, a bringer of light and power.
Gojam Province 1968
An omniscient, yet participating bystander to the ’68 riots in Ethiopia’s Gojam Province describes how he and those he’s with “bash...in the heads of tax collectors,” “tak[ing] aim at the dawning day...starving to death for the low-hanging fruit.” The desperation is undercut by the beautifully spare piano in the background, punctuating Darnielle’s powerful phrases with so many well placed musical commas and line breaks.
Satanic Messiahdiffers from Heretic Pride in the presence of a consistent theme that pervades all four of the EP's songs; the theme that unites the tracks is the often obscene feeling of waiting. The narrators on Satanic Messiah are waiting for the end, waiting for the transfiguration (in the form of a rock concert), or waiting for the change to transform their current situation. The music is more sparse than most of Heretic Pride’s orchestrations; recalling the bleak, quiet arrangements of 2006’s Get Lonely in their respect for the words, giving them space to breathe and settle in the room.
John Darnielle’s oeuvre is large, it contains multitudes. Patterns emerge after a while and then he subverts his audience’s expectations once again. Satanic Messiah isn’t more of the same, however, as such a thing doesn’t really exist in terms of Mountain Goats releases. What Satanic Messiah is however, is a delightful break between full length releases; four brilliant tracks that shatter through other lesser songwriters' talents like an axe through ice.
Links:
Official Site
Official, Legal Download Site
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