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in: Heretic Pride songs, Video, The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 1 and 2 songs

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

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 Lovecraft in Brooklyn
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Album

 Heretic Pride

Released

 2008

Artist

the Mountain Goats

Length

3:49

Previous Track

"In the Craters on the Moon"

Next Track

"Tianchi Lake"

Lovecraft in Brooklyn is the eighth song on the album Heretic Pride. It also appears as the 18th song on the 2020 live album The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 1 and 2.

Press Kit notes[]

Lovecraft in Brooklyn

American horror icon H.P. Lovecraft moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved. He had never really seen any people who were not white folks from Massachusetts. Immigrants were spilling into Brooklyn from the four corners of the globe. Lovecraft's xenophobia during his time in Brooklyn resulted in some of the weirdest, darkest images in all American literature; One must condemn Lovecraft's ugly racism, of course, but his not-unrelated inclination toward a general suspicion of anything that's alive is pretty fertile ground. 

Lyrics[]

It's gonna be too hot to breathe today
But everybody is out here on the streets
Somebody's opened up the fire hydrant
Cold water rushing out in sheets

Some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey
Asks me for a cigarette
Companionship is where you find it
So I take what I can get

Hubcaps on the car like fun house mirrors
Stick to the shadows when I can
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Well the sun goes down on the armies of the voiceless
Several hundred-thousand strong
Come without their bandages
Their voices raised in song

When the street lights sputter out
They make this awful sizzling sound
I cast my gaze towards the pavement
Too many blood stains on the ground

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Head outside most everyday 
To try to keep the wolves away
Imagine nice things I might say
If company should come

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid
Headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade

Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It'll store our brains in mason jars

And then the girl behind the counter 
She asks me how I feel today
I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Yeah!

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "Once again, to express my affection for you, I'd like to play this song about a fellow who is really so filled with anger and rage that the mere sight of other human beings makes him feel even more angry. He's angry already when he wakes up, before he remembers that there's other people on the planet. But once he thinks of those other people, then he starts to really get going. And heaven help you if he should have to go and get some kleenex or whatever from the corner store, then he will really be filled with a special kind of contempt. Why? Because you have bodies and they make him sick. That's what this song is about. I know everyone can relate to the tender feelings expressed in it." -- 2008-03-22 - The Black Cat - Washington, D.C.
  • "Let us now play you another song about people who hate everybody" - 2008-03-02 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, CA

Things Referenced in this Song[]

  • The thing from "beyond the stars" which will "store our brains in mason jars" is the Mi-Go from H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Whisperer In Darkness", which "can transport humans from Earth to Pluto (and beyond) and back again by removing the subject's brain and placing it into a 'brain cylinder' as an isolated brain, which can be attached to external devices to allow it to see, hear, and speak."
  • Marcus Allen was an NFL star in the 1980s and 90s.
  • “Rhode Island drops into the ocean” may be an allusion to the line “California slides into the ocean” from Warren Zevon's song “Desperados Under the Eaves,” with Lovecraft's home state of Rhode Island substituted for California.

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]



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