Shortly before the release of Days, The Mountain Goats’ vocalist and principal songwriter John Darnielle announced that “No Children,” a vituperative divorce song from his 2002 album Tallahassee, had been certified gold nearly a quarter-century after its initial release. It underscored the fact that Darnielle’s songs help turn life’s trials into reasons to cultivate empathy, both for oneself and for others. Days, The Mountain Goats’ 24th studio album, opens with “Song for Layne Staley,” about the Alice in Chains vocalist who passed away in 2002. Writing the track, a stormy portrait of Staley’s addiction, led to Darnielle rethinking both the band’s output and the idea of the past. The old days are well-represented on the Days tracklist—“Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds,” “Best Hard Rock Albums 2013,” “Candlebox.” But these songs aren’t merely cheap “remember when” jabs; they instead flesh out alternate histories for people who might have been turned into caricatures by lesser writers. The propulsive “Sheen,” which riffs on a 1991 incident where the acting scion reported what he thought was a snuff film to authorities, peers inside the head of someone convinced he’s on the side of good. ”2013” views the music listicle as something positive, an occasion to look back on the past and “check out the ones you missed,” while “Candlebox” tells the story of a band that’s wondering if they’re on the brink. (It’s as lighter-worthy as that pop-grunge band’s 1993 barn burner “You.”) Days ends with “Last Day,” a rumination on mortality in the guise of a barroom boogie. Its reassurances about the end tacitly play off the idea of nostalgia, with the fear of uncertainty (“And if we go by the text/We can’t really say what’s next”) spurring people to live in the past, or at least an idealized version of it. Darnielle, instead, looks at the well-worn stories and the unknown with clear-eyed compassion.