In 1998, when
Golden Smog released their second full-length album,
Weird Tales, they were the premier supergroup of the alt-country movement, featuring key members of two of the scene's biggest acts,
Wilco and
the Jayhawks, as well as roots-friendly guitarist Dan Murphy from
Soul Asylum. Eight years later, things are different for everyone involved with the band; alt-country never enjoyed the commercial breakthrough many were expecting,
Wilco evolved into a noise-friendly prog-pop band,
the Jayhawks got less twangy and more expressively hooky on the road to breaking up,
Soul Asylum effectively dropped off the map for close to a decade, and 2006's
Another Fine Day audibly reflects the many changes these musicians have gone through.
Jeff Tweedy of
Wilco is now easily the biggest name in this band, and significantly, he's more stingy with his time; his songwriting credits amount to two songs penned with
Jayhawk Gary Louris, and he only appears on six of the disc's 15 tracks. However, the more adventurous musical palate that
Wilco has embraced is certainly felt, with a veneer of tastefully applied noise noticeable on numbers such as "Beautiful Mind" and "You Make It Easy." The real creative movers behind the album are former
Jayhawks Marc Perlman,
Kraig Jarret Johnson, and
Gary Louris; they wrote the bulk of the material as well as dominating the instrumental credits, and their work here suggests a slightly more "out there" variation on the expressive pop textures of
Sound of Lies and
Smile. (Oddly, "Listen Joe," which
Louris wrote with
Tweedy, more closely resembles the more subtle approach of
Rainy Day Music.) In this context, Dan Murphy sounds more like a hired gun than anything else, though he's clearly simpatico with the other players and when he gets a chance to come to the forefront his rock gestures and well-controlled feedback are a welcome part to the band. One of the results of
Tweedy's lesser degree of participation on these sessions is
Another Fine Day sounds less scattershot and more unified than
Golden Smog's earlier efforts, which makes sense since the core of this band had been working together for years, and the results seem less like a genially thrown-together side project than the work of a real band. The only drawback for fans is this
Golden Smog doesn't bear much aural resemblance to the band that made
Down by the Old Mainstream and
Weird Tales; then again, the bands who make up
Golden Smog's membership don't sound much like they did back then, either, so that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. ~ Mark Deming