The Mountain Goats Announce Days, Led by Charlie Sheen-Inspired Single and a Major Tour

The Mountain Goats have lined up their next album, Days, and they’re opening the campaign with a single built around one of the strangest celebrity panics of the early ’90s. “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out To The Feds” arrives alongside news of the band’s 24th studio LP and a sprawling tour that will take them through North America and Europe, with stops at Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall before the year is out.

The new record comes only about six months after Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan, the band’s ambitious last album, which featured Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tommy Stinson. Since then, John Darnielle and company have stayed active with the one-off “Going To Fennario” and two cover songs recorded with Mary Chapin Carpenter. Days is the next turn, and it arrives with enough referential clutter to make the project feel both lived-in and a little arch, the way Mountain Goats records often do when they start chasing a concept and end up revealing a larger mood.

“Charlie Sheen Reaches Out To The Feds” is one of those Mountain Goats songs that runs on narrative momentum and a very specific kind of historical absurdity. Darnielle sings over brisk, horn-heavy instrumentation in the barked, wavering delivery that has long been one of the band’s most recognizable modes. The song takes its cue from a real episode in 1991, when Sheen, after watching the Japanese horror film Guinea Pig 2: Flower Of Flesh And Blood, reportedly believed he had seen a real snuff film and contacted the FBI. The bureau investigated the movie and its distributors, then backed off after reviewing a making-of video. A few other things happened in Sheen’s career after that, as Darnielle seems well aware.

“Gentlemen, the camera doesn’t lie! How many more innocent women must die?”

That line, delivered from the perspective of an agitated but purposeful Charlie Sheen, gives a sense of the song’s angle: not so much parody as a skewed act of inhabiting a tabloid-era delusion. In the press release announcing the album, Darnielle says Days was originally titled Grunges and conceived as a sequel to 2017’s Goths. Some of that idea remains on the surface in titles like “Song For Layne Staley” and “Candlebox,” while “Going To Fennario” also makes the cut. Darnielle described the album as being loosely about the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, or more precisely about the accumulation of days that drift further back in memory, sometimes sharpened by distance and sometimes turning into something harder to name. He also joked that although many of the songs are in major keys, listeners shouldn’t mistake that for comfort.

“This album began life as Grunges, a sequel to Goths, after I made a joke on social media about writing a song called ‘Contemplating Pearl Jam In The Carolina Dawn.’ 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.”

Days was recorded at Manhattan’s Sear Sound with producer John Congleton. Rob Jost played bass and French horn, while Catherine Russel and Jamie and Carolyn Leonhart contributed group backing vocals. Matt Nathanson appears on “Candlebox,” and The Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegal adds layered vocals to “Hidden Majesty Of Later Venom Albums,” a pairing that says as much about the album’s cast of characters as its title list does.

The tour plan is equally wide-ranging. The Mountain Goats will move across North America and Europe, including shows with the Hold Steady, whose Craig Finn will also open for the band on the European leg. The year closes with those major venue dates in Los Angeles and New York, which, for a band now deep into its second or third life depending on how you count these things, feels less like a victory lap than another extension of the project’s long, prolific run.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Song For Layne Staley”
02 “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out To The Feds”
03 “Shallow Grave”
04 “Candlebox”
05 “Annie Haslam Imperial Phase”
06 “Crying On Eddie Nash’s Grave”
07 “Days”
08 “Best Hard Rock Albums 2013”
09 “Going To Fennario”
10 “Woodstock”
11 “Hidden Majesty Of Later Venom Albums”
12 “Last Day”

TOUR DATES:
5/15 – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
5/16 – Woodstock, NY @ Bearsville Theater
5/17 – New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall
5/19 – Boston, MA @ Citizens House of Blues
5/21 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
5/22 – Kalamazoo, MI @ Bell’s Beer Garden
5/23 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue Theatre
5/24 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
5/26 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl Nashville
5/28 – Lexington, KY @ Manchester Music Hall
5/29 – Charlotte, NC @ Neighborhood Theatre
5/30 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
5/31 – Charleston, SC @ Spoleto Festival USA
6/25 – Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
6/26 – Berwyn, IL @ Fitzgeralds Outdoors
7/10 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre ^
8/08 – Portland, OR @ Pioneer Courthouse Square *
8/09 – Seattle, WA @ ZooTunes at Woodland Park Zoo *
8/14 – Cincinnati, OH @ Taft Theatre
8/15 – Cleveland, OH @ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
8/16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls Theatre
8/17 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
8/19 – South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Ballroom
8/20 – Lititz, PA @ Mickey’s Black Box
8/21 – Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
8/22 – Durham, NC @ DPAC
10/05 – Helsinki, Finland @ Kuudes Linja #
10/07 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Nalen #
10/08 – Oslo, Norway @ Vulkan Arena #
10/10 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Pumpehuset #
10/11 – Berlin, Germany @ Metropol #
10/12 – Hamburg, Germany @ Pop Seasons at Christianskirche
10/13 – Ghent, Belgium @ De Centrale #
10/14 – Utrecht, Netherlands @ TivoliVredenburg #
10/16 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall #
10/18 – Dublin, Ireland @ 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