Golden Smog: A Lackluster Day

Golden Smog
Another Fine Day
Lost Highway

Taken by itself, alt-country supergroup Golden Smog's "Another Fine Day" is, well, fine. But you can't help but put it up against the group's previous three releases -- and it pales in comparison.

The usual quirk dished up by the Smog -- founding Jayhawks Gary Louris and Marc Perlman and one-time Jayhawk Kraig Jarret Johnson along with Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco -- is served only in small portions here. Nothing on "Another Fine Day" comes close to the charming "Pecan Pie" or strange-but-wonderful "He's A Dick" from "Down By The Old Mainstream," for example. This album, out Tuesday, shies away from such fun and frivolity in favor of more serious ruminations on middle age. Which isn't to say it's a downer -- Louris-and-Johnson-penned lead track "You Make it Easy," for example, is upbeat in sound and lighthearted in spirit. And even the songs about more serious matters, like, you know, death, are approached with more of a "hey, that's life" vibe than with histrionics.

One question raised by "Another Fine Day" is the extent of Tweedy's involvement. His voice is rarely heard here, and even the press materials from label Lost Highway, in describing the band's membership and evolution, says Tweedy "comes and goes these days." Most telling? The band's "official" Web site (which, appallingly, embarrassingly, is on friggin' myspace -- we can't get them their own domain name, or at least something more than a half-hearted single page on the Lost Highway site??) is topped by a band photo from which Tweedy is conspicuously missing. But there's still a lot of "super" left in this supergroup, so the question is more a curiosity than a concern.

The songwriting, as one might expect from a group with this much aggregate talent, is solid -- but even after an entire weekend spent listening to nothing but this album, not one of its 15 songs (all original except for a beautifully harmonized cover of the Kinks' "Strangers") stuck in my head. None of the previous Smog albums left me nearly that easily. Almost every song on "Another Fine Day" is momentarily entertaining -- with the possible exception of "Corvette," which sounds for all the world like the opening-credits music of some awful '80s high-school romantic comedy. But otherwise, the album's songs feature some interesting guitar work with a just-right amount of electronic effects and gorgeous harmonies. The only problem is that like actual smog, the effect is pretty fleeting.