Even if I knew nothing about The Mountain Goats, a glance at the track listing for ‘Days’ would instantly pique my interest. ‘Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds’, ‘Annie Haslam Imperial Phase’ and ‘Hidden Majesty of Later Venom Albums’ leap out as tales far from the ordinary. According to John Darnielle who is clearly as accomplished in spinning a yarn for publicity as he is at song and novel writing, ‘Days’ was originally going to be called ‘Grunges’, a sequel to their 2017 album ‘Goths’, arising out of a joke he had made on social media about recording a song called ‘Contemplating Pearl Jam in the Carolina Dawn’.
Instead, ‘Days’ arrives as a loosely themed record based around the period from the 1970s through to the 1990s. As the title suggests, it is about an accumulation of ‘Days’ and how memories take on different shapes, sometimes blurring, on other occasions developing clarity. The record is peppered with references to cultural ephemera and niche references which means that Wikipedia should get a co-write credit for this review. Despite Darnielle’s initial suggestion that it would be called ‘Grunges’, it reflects his fascination with metal and prog, tastes that are not evident in the music he produces with his bandmates, Matt Douglas and Jon Wurster.
In fact, ‘Days’ is very much a pop album, albeit an uncommonly wordy one, with major chords predominating and providing a contrast with its lyrical preoccupations which are familiar Darnielle tropes of life and mortality, illustrated on opening track, ‘Song for Layne Staley’, which references the Alice in Chains frontman, his rapid decline and early death. Starting with acoustic guitar backing and detailing the achievement of his childhood dreams, it quickly turns to a chorus of “I don’t want this / I don’t need this” and pop-grunge riffs. Another troubled soul becomes the narrator of ‘Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds’ with his protestations that there is “only so much a good man can take” while sax, keyboards and group backing vocals join the big guitar chords in giving the song a rousing quality.
The cognitive dissonance continues with the ostensibly cheery, light barroom boogie of ‘Shallow Grave’ including an instruction to get a bucket of chicken wings. The anthemic ‘Candlebox’ is a fictional tale about a group going out on tour as support to the Seattle band of that name. There are delightful details like the ease of sleeping on the tour bus when “young and dumber than a bag of rocks.” In a remarkable instance of life imitating art, the Mountain Goats have subsequently been announced as a support to Candlebox this September.
With its keyboard fanfares, soft funk backing, brief sax solo and three-minute duration, ‘Annie Haslam Imperial Phase’ is representative of the concise, punchy quality of their music on ‘Days’. It references the vocalist with the progressive folk rock band Renaissance who, according to the song, played Carnegie Hall in 1971 and performed a song that was 29-minutes long. The semi-acoustic shuffle of ‘Crying on Eddie Nash’s Grave’, referring to the LA nightclub owner, convicted money launderer and drug trafficker who was allegedly the mastermind of the Wonderland murders but never convicted, is musically the record’s least compelling track.
A musically light mood remains on the title track but the chorus of “do you know how short the days are?” marks a return to contemplation of mortality. ‘Best Hard Rock Albums of 2013’ could almost be a first cousin of ‘My Favourite Things’ though with a vastly different panoply of delights: egrets in a salt marsh viewed from a moving car, the first time getting high and a father’s delight at his child’s first words. With its pattering percussion, elongated bass notes and humming sax, the music is pleasingly at odds with any notion of hard rock.
‘Going To Fennario’ was originally released earlier in 2026 as a tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and sees Darnielle revisiting his informal series of songs beginning “Going to” that he has written over the course of 30 years. It captures the lucid, unsentimental quality of traditional songs about death and in its references to “sail(ing) without a captain evermore” revisits the nautical metaphor of 2025 album, ‘Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan.’ With Mikaela Davis’s harp adding to the light country folk feel, it is an album highlight. Its subdued pace and “yell about cocaine” refrain make it evident that ‘Woodstock’ is not a celebration of the later staging of that festival.
With its opening line of “only the diehards remain”, ‘Hidden Majesty of Later Venom Albums’ explores the wider theme of life after a peak of popularity has subsided. The song features layered backing vocals from Janis Siegal of The Manhattan Transfer, best known for their 1976 UK number one ‘Chanson D’Amour’ which felt old-fashioned and curiously out of time then, making her appearance on a song about a heavy metal band so delightfully unlikely. In combination with understated piano, strings and bass, her vocals give the song an elegiac quality. Doused with swirling organ, the album goes out on a high with the morbidly upbeat ‘Last Day’ with its reassurance that “the last day of your life will be sweet.”
‘Days’ proves to be a worthy addition to the Mountain Goats’ extensive catalogue, now standing at 24 full-length albums. It revisits Darnielle’s familiar fascinations with his customary lyrical dexterity and imagination while the band’s musical arrangements are increasingly sophisticated. May they have many more days.
The Mountain Goats: Days – Out 7 August 2026 (Cadmean Dawn Records)
to Fennario (the Mountain Goats)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
