Written during the slow, spiralling months of the pandemic, “Days” by Tuxis Giant is an ode to the in-between: that soft, liminal space between work and rest, grief and magic, numbness and joy.

A brisk and buoyant two-minute track, “Days” fuses the weary with the whimsical. “At the end of the day, I put my apron away / Then, at night, all the spirits come out to party”, sings Matt O’Connor (they/them), tracing the song’s dreamlike mood with gentle guitars and a ghostly vocal refrain. Where other songs on the record turn inward, “Days” reaches out, a hand extended, a reminder not to lose sight of each other in the daily blur. “When the days beat you down, don’t forget about me.”

The song was inspired in part by the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki, especially their depiction of labour as something both beautiful and burdensome. Like Spirited Away with a guitar, “Days” imagines the invisible world that stirs just beyond the end of the shift. Playful, strange, and quietly spiritual, it taps into the album’s central thesis: even the smallest moments contain their own sacred weight.

Frontperson Matt O’Connor explains the inspiration, “I originally wrote this years ago, scrapped it, and then reintroduced to the band. It came after watching Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo for the first time. It’s about the tough, cyclical relationship between work and play, which is something Miyazaki seems to embody: a hard-nosed work ethic that produces the most whimsical things imaginable. It’s our favorite one to play live.”

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