Listening to any new album by The Mountain Goats is like going crate digging at your local independent record store. You’ve got the bestsellers (‘The Sunset Tree’, ‘Tallahassee’), the staff- picked cult favourites (‘We Shall All Be Healed’, ‘Heretic Pride’), and the new arrivals (‘Jenny From Thebes’, ‘Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan’). Their 24th outing, ‘Days’, might be lost in the racks a little — it’s an old reliable of a Mountain Goats release, for better or worse.

Originally envisioned as ‘Grunges’, a sequel to 2017’s ‘Goths’, ‘Days’ not only sees The Mountain Goats chief John Darnielle hop in a time machine both thematically and musically, touching on many of the motifs that have made the indie-rock journeymen so beloved.

You’ve got the full band sing-alongs (Shallow Grave), the woodwind-laced lounge music sidesteps (Annie Haslam’s Imperial Phase, Best Hard Rock Albums 2013), the deceptively jaunty indie bangers (Crying On Eddie Nash’s Grave), and the quiet song that’s soul-quakingly devastating (Woodstock, Hidden Majesty of Later Venom Albums).

At times, ‘Days’ offers up gems you’d expect to dust off on a greatest hits record. Opener Song For Layne Staley is a Ouija board channelling the late Alice In Chains frontman, a slow-burning candle of rustic Americana that melts into a gloriously messy scent of fuzzy distortion, pounding drums, and a heavy hook to sing along to. 

Charlie Sheen Reaches Out To The Feds, inspired by an urban legend about the actor mistaking a mid-80s Japanese flick for a snuff film, is as chaotic as the story itself with throbbing basslines and fuzzed-up riffs colliding head-on with plucky harps, French horns, and synths. 

Like many vinyl records, Side B feels inferior to Side A. Best Hard Rock Albums 2013 finds Darnielle at his songwriting best, wielding end-of-year listicles as a metaphor for lapsed memories. But the surrounding shelves are less fruitful. Going To Fennario’s corny country, and Woodstock and Hidden Majesty Of Later Venom Albums’ coffin-dragging cacophony of dreary piano keys soundtracking tales of bygone bands turn familiarity into fatigue. 

And the title track presents the album’s central problem: it’s so recognisably Mountain Goats that you occasionally wonder whether you’ve heard it before. But when the old favourites still sound this good, a comfortable sort of routine is hardly grounds for returning them.

The Mountain Goats Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Fri October 16 2026 - MANCHESTER Albert Hall
Sun October 18 2026 - DUBLIN Vicar Street
Mon October 19 2026 - GLASGOW Barrowland Ballroom
Wed October 21 2026 - LONDON Hackney Church
Thu October 22 2026 - LONDON Hackney Church
Fri October 23 2026 - BRISTOL Bristol Beacon

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