Days Off

The Threat Of Joy, the new album by Chicago-based Days Off, may very well be the best record of 2009 that you haven’t heard yet. At its best, Days Off channel the rambunctious spirit of the Minutemen, if the seminal band had been obsessed with Thin Lizzy rather than Creedence Clearwater Revival. Everything comes together on stand-out track “Staying Here,” which captures the simple joy of playing in a band that will never hit the big time. And when vocalist-guitarist Mike Berg sings the last lines of stand-out track “Staying Here”—“If you’re mad I suggest you lose it/Some other people/They didn’t have music”—you get the sense Days Off would be perfectly content writing songs only for themselves.

Updated 07/15/2009