The Mountain Goats: Days (Dawn With Its Rose-Tipped Fingers pink vinyl, indie exclusive) [CADMEAN DAWN]

Why you'll love it

The independent record store edition, on Dawn With Its Rose-Tipped Fingers pink vinyl. John Darnielle wrote these songs about the '70s, '80s and '90s in two weeks, then cut them at Sear Sound in Manhattan with John Congleton, and "Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds" leads the way.

This edition

• Independent record store exclusive
• Dawn With Its Rose-Tipped Fingers pink vinyl
• Twelve tracks

About the album

It began as a joke. Darnielle posted about writing a song called "Contemplating Pearl Jam in the Carolina Dawn", which turned into an idea for Grunges, a sequel to 2017's Goths, which turned into Days. He wrote it while his wife was away on a two-week residency, much as he wrote All Hail West Texas while she was off playing hockey in Banff, and the songs are about the accumulation of days sliding into the past, often by way of the music that soundtracked them.

So there's "Song for Layne Staley", "Candlebox", "Annie Haslam Imperial Phase" for the Renaissance singer, "Woodstock '99" and "Majesty of Later Venom Albums", with harp from Mikaela Davis, French horn from Rob Jost and backing vocals from the Manhattan Transfer's Janis Siegel and Catherine Russell. It arrived just nine months after the last one. Darnielle writes faster than most of us read, and he's still better at it.

Tracklist

Listen

Out August 7, 2026 on Cadmean Dawn (cat# CD-007).