(Cadmean Dawn, CD, digital, vinyl)
John Darnielle has a way with words. Aside from his career as an acclaimed novelist, he’s released so many albums with his band the Mountain Goats over the past 30-plus years that he prefers not to number them. And he writes his own press releases.
Days, the North Carolina band’s “something-somethingth” record, as he puts it, finds its creator “sad and smitten with wonder by how the past is a place upon which you both can & can’t enact a sort of renovation.” What he means is: You can’t change what happened, but you can change how you feel about it. Aging inevitably invites retrospection, he writes, “if you’re lucky enough to be getting older.”
Arguably one of indie rock’s most enduring characters, Darnielle looks back to his ’90s origins for songwriting inspo, packaging his tall tales, musings and fanboy tendencies in stylistically timeless songs. Legendary drummer Jon Wurster and one-man orchestra Matt Douglas, both longtime band members, are complementary creative forces themselves. Also returning is John Congleton, the Kevin Bacon of indie music producers.
It’s not terribly obvious what lies in Darnielle’s unchangeable past, thus the record (thankfully) is not really about “x happened, but now I feel y about it.” Even he acknowledges that the press release says virtually nothing about who he actually is, as he prefers.
Days is a collage of ’90s nostalgia sprinkled with obscure pop-culture references and esoteric names that drop like pennies into a fountain. Horns, saxophone, synth, harp and harmonizing background singers embellish its guitar-driven sound.
It’s impossible to listen to Days and not learn some things. For example, “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds” is a propulsive number that recalls the very real time in the early ’90s that the “Two and a Half Men” actor called the FBI after watching a Japanese horror flick he mistook for an actual snuff film. Why write a song about this, you might ask? Um, probably because no one ever has.
Driven by fierce horns over bright piano, “Annie Haslam Imperial Phase” finds its singer wondering if people remember when the English singer’s band Renaissance performed at Carnegie Hall. (ICYMI, a remastered, three-CD edition of the concert was released in 2019.)
“Woodstock,” packed with pre-millennium angst, details messy scenes from Woodstock ’99. “Candlebox” is an almost-too-earnest paean to the Seattle ’90s rock band. And “Crying on Eddie Nash’s Grave” is a breezy elegy for the Los Angeles club owner and criminal.
Even with all of its trivia, Days doesn’t require a degree in indie ethnomusicology to be enjoyed. It occasionally veers into some darker themes, but its shadows are mere accents to the good spirits at its core.
Days is available at themountaingoats.bandcamp.com and on major streaming services. Catch the Mountain Goats on Wednesday, August 19, at the Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington.
This article appears in August 12 • 2026.
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