Mountain Goats Intro New LP With Ode To Charlie Sheen

Three decades and 24 albums (!?!) into their career, the Mountain Goats are still finding new ways to transform bizarre pop-culture lore into existential indie rock. The latest example is Days, the band’s newly announced full-length LP due Aug. 7 and led by the single “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds.” Yes, the song is exactly what it sounds like.

Frontman John Darnielle drew inspiration from one of the stranger footnotes in Sheen history: in 1991, around the time the actor starred in Hot Shots!, he reportedly watched the gruesome Japanese horror film Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood and became convinced he’d witnessed an actual murder on tape. According to the long-circulating story, Sheen contacted the FBI, triggering an investigation into the film before authorities ultimately determined it was an elaborate practical-effects production.

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Naturally, Darnielle decided to write from Sheen’s perspective.“Gentlemen, the camera doesn’t lie! / How many more innocent women must die?” he sings with escalating conviction on the track, channeling a paranoid but oddly sincere version of the actor years before his phrase “winning” entered the cultural lexicon.

Darnielle says Days originally began as a conceptual follow-up to the Mountain Goats’ beloved 2017 album Goths and bore the intentionally goofy working title Grunges. The idea reportedly stemmed from a joke Darnielle made online about writing a song called “Contemplating Pearl Jam in the Carolina Dawn,” which eventually evolved into a broader meditation on memory, aging and the emotional debris of the past decades.

“These songs are loosely about the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, which is to say they’re about the accumulation of days,” he says. “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.”

Produced by John Congleton and recorded at New York’s Sear Sound, Days also features contributions from bassist and French horn player Rob Jost, backing vocals by the Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegal, guest vocals from Matt Nathanson on “Candlebox” and harp by Mikaela Davis on “Going to Fennario.”

The band will support the release with an extensive world tour beginning Friday (May 15) in Silver Spring, Md., with dates stretching across North America and Europe.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

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