There’s barely been enough time to fully unpack last November’s Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan, and already The Mountain Goats are back with another record queued up for release. The new album, Days, is due August 7th via Cadmean Dawn Records.

The first taste comes in the form of “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds,” a title that feels perfectly calibrated to John Darnielle’s long-running fascination with cultural wreckage and forgotten corners of American mythology.

In a press statement, Darnielle explained that the album initially began as Grunges, conceived as a spiritual successor to the band’s 2017 album Goths. The spark, apparently, came from “a joke on social media about writing a song called ‘Contemplating Pearl Jam in the Carolina Dawn.’”

From there, the project snowballed into something more reflective and sprawling. Darnielle said:

“A few months later my wife left town for a two week residency in Virginia. My wife leaving town to play hockey in Banff is how All Hail West Texas happened. These songs are loosely about the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which is to say they’re about the accumulation of days, each one a little further back than the next, sometimes miraculously seeming clearer as they recede and sometimes blurring into unrecognizable shapes which are sometimes pleasant and sometimes troubling. Most songs here are in major keys but don’t let that fool you. If you do let that fool you I have a bridge to sell you; there is nothing on the other side of the bridge. Still, you shouldn’t let that deter you. Who am I to tell you what kind of bridge you need, or where the bridge you need should lead? Nobody, really. Nobody at all.”

The album was produced by John Congleton and recorded at Sear Sound, the legendary Manhattan studio whose walls have absorbed decades of New York music history. Alongside Darnielle, the current Mountain Goats lineup includes Matt Douglas and Jon Wurster, marking the band’s first stretch without longtime bassist Peter Hughes, who exited in 2024 after a remarkable 30-year run.

Additional contributors on Days include bassist and French horn player Rob Jost, harpist Mikaela Davis, and a rotating cast of backing vocalists that reportedly push the record into richer, more textured territory.

Days is out August 7th and available for pre-order here. Tracklist below:

1. Song for Layne Staley
2. Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds
3. Shallow Grave
4. Candlebox
5. Annie Haslam Imperial Phase
6. Crying on Eddie Nash’s Grave
7. Days
8. Best Hard Rock Albums 2013
9. Going to Fennario
10. Woodstock
11. Hidden Majesty of Later Venom Albums
12. Last Day

Tour Dates:

05/15 Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
05/16 Woodstock, NY @ Bearsville Theater
05/17 New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall
05/19 Boston, MA @ Citizens House of Blues
05/21 Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
05/22 Kalamazoo, MI @ Bell’s Beer Garden
05/23 Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue Theatre
05/24 St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
05/26 Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl Nashville
05/28 Lexington, KY @ Manchester Music Hall
05/29 Charlotte, NC @ Neighborhood Theatre
05/30 Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
05/31 Charleston, SC @ Spoleto Festival USA
06/25 Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
06/26 Berwyn, IL @ Fitzgeralds Outdoors
07/10 Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
08/08 Portland, OR @ Pioneer Courthouse Square ^
08/09 Seattle, WA @ ZooTunes at Woodland Park Zoo *
08/15 Cleveland, OH @ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame *
08/14 Cincinnati, OH @ Taft Theatre
08/16 Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Smalls
08/17 Buffalo, NY @ Town Hall Ballroom
08/19 Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Ballroom
08/20 Litiz, PA @ Mickey’s Black Box
08/21 Norfolk, VA @ The Norva
08/22 Durham, NC @ DPAC
10/05 Helsinki, FI @ Kuudes Linja #
10/07 Stockholm, SE @ Nalen #
10/08 Oslo, NO @ Vulkan Arena #
10/10 Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset
10/11 Berlin, DE @ Metropol
10/12 Hamburg, Germany @ Pop Seasons at Christianskirche
10/13 Ghent, BE @ De Centrale #
10/14 Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg #
10/16 Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall #
10/18 Dublin, IE @ Vicar Street #
10/19 Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland Ballroom #
10/21 London, UK @ Hackney Church #
10/22 London, UK @ Hackney Church #
10/23 Bristol, UK @ Bristol Beacon #
11/24 Los Angeles, CA @ Walt Disney Concert Hall
12/10 New York, NY @ Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall
12/11 New York, NY @ Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall

^ w/ The Avett Brothers
* w/ The Hold Steady
# w/ Craig Finn
@ Expanded Line-Up

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