The Mountain Goats Release New Song “Candlebox”
Days Due Out August 7 on Cadmean Dawn via Thirty Tigers
Jul 08, 2026 By Mark Redfern Photography by Alan Velasco
The Mountain Goats are releasing a new album, Days, on August 7 on the band’s own Cadmean Dawn Records via Thirty Tigers. Now they have released its third single, “Candlebox.” Listen below.
Previously the band shared its first single, “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then they released its second single, “Shallow Grave,” which also landed on Songs of the week.
The band’s core lineup is John Darnielle, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster.
Darnielle had this to say about the new single in a press release: “Our new single is called ‘Candlebox’ and is about a nameless band in the ’90s who get offered an opening slot on the Candlebox tour. 1993, maybe, or 1994, and shortly after the whole experience they’re not a band any more. Days is an album about how the past looks when you’re looking at it from way down the line so I had to call in Matt Nathanson to sing harmonies; we were young men together when stories like this one were being passed around like lore. Recorded at the legendary Sear Sound in Manhattan during perfect weather. John Congleton produced and mixed. Jon Wurster on drums, Matt Douglas on guitar, Rob Jost played bass, I played keys and did the guitar solo. Set the dial for maximum ’90s because we pulled out all the stops: enjoy!”
John Congleton produced the album, which is their 24th and follows 2025’s Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan (which was inspired by musicals and featured Broadway legend Lin-Manuel Miranda) and 2023’s Jenny from Thebes.
Darnielle had this to say in a previous press release: “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 Sear Sound in Manhattan and also features Rob Jost on bass and French horn and group backing vocals from Catherine Russsell and Jamie and Carolyn Leonhart. Janis Siegal of The Manhattan Transfer recorded layered backing vocals on “Hidden Majesty of Later Venom Albums.” Matt Nathanson contributed vocals to “Candlebox,” with Mikaela Davis adding harp to “Going to Fennario.”
English (US) · 