Golden Smog - Another Fine Day
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Golden SmogEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2006-07-18
Music Label: Lost Highway
Soundtracks:
- You Make It Easy
- Another Fine Day
- 5-22-02
- Long Time Ago
- Corvette
- Beautiful Mind
- Listen Joe
- Cure For This
- Hurricane
- Strangers
- Frying Pan Eyes
- Gone
- Never Felt Before
- I Can
- Think About Yourself
Free Music Notes for Another Fine Day
Free Music Review: Fine fine fine
Hit: 5 Stars
I have never awaited the release of a recorded piece of music as anxiously as I did the latest from Golden Smog. So of course, when I popped it in the player, I was instantly stunned. I was expecting to hear something like "To Call My Own" come blasting out of the speakers, and that is not what I heard. In its place was something much more studio-sculpted and modern sounding. Gone was the roots rock looseness that had shaped this collective's earlier sound.
But my frame of reference is different now than it was when I first heard "To Call My Own," and this could account for this music's immediate sense of strangeness. A lot has changed since my impulsive purchase of "Weird Tales" some time in 2003. When I found that disc I had read a review or two that had called it "aural prozac" and that was just what I was in need of. So I spent some of what little cash I had at the time on a used copy at the local indie record store, hoping that the lightly worn disc would play alright in my stereo at home. It did, and it wormed its way deep into my consciousness, became the cornerstone of my music collection and shaped many of my purchases since that time. Basically, many of my listening choices since that time have been an attempt to recapture that feeling that took ahold of me when "To Call My Own" came roaring out of those speakers like a house on fire.
So here I am three years later. My life is much different now, a lot of the desperation of those times is gone. I had no problem springing for a store-bought copy of "Another Fine Day," knowing my finances would be more than OK. The career woes and bad relationships of the "Weird Tales" era of my life are now memories, thankfully. So of course this record isn't going to feel the same as "Weird Tales" did because back then everything I listened to seemed to have more urgency or speak more directly to my condition.
So I gave this album a deeper listen, and arrived at the fact that these boys have grown up, just like I did. Their use of sonic texturing, their cohesion as a band, the embracing of pop-rock, all suit their maturation and desire to explore new terrain. There are rootsy moments, like "Long Time Ago" (a wonderful song about dealing with the introduction of a new sibling into the narrator's life) and the stunning cover of the Kinks' "Strangers." Others, like the first two tracks and "Corvette," sound suited for modern rock radio. What struck me is that beneath the cleaner studio veneer, these guys are still having fun, rocking because they mean it, loving music in a way that too few groups do nowadays. Yeah Jeff Tweedy isn't as strong a voice in this group now (although his work is intergrated into the whole surprisingly well) but so what? This is basically an extension of the Jayhawks' later years, which is fine by me.
So in summation, I do lament the loss of some of the rootsiness. It does seem like a lot of the greats from the mid-to-late-90s alt-country revolution (hee hee) have turned into avant-garde-power-popsters, which is fine by me, but it was never until this point what Golden Smog was really about. Nonetheless, I am finding as I spin it more and more that this disc is an extension of rather than a departure from what made this band great in the first place. In their own way, these songs are quickly becoming new favorites. They'll find their place in my life and pretty soon, "Another Fine Day" will take its place alongside "Weird Tales" on the shelf dedicated to pure aural prozac. When that happens, it'll be a fine day indeed.
Another Fine Day Poster
It might sound like hype, but as hype nips at your ears every day from every corner, who gives a damn? You?re smart. Your BS detector is strong; take this missive with a grain of salt, but don?t talk yourself out of opening your ears to this mix-by-one-band-how-can-this-be-one-band? that fell from the skies of Puerto Santa Maria, Spain and Minneapolis, Minnesota.Start with Gary Louris and Kraig Jarret Johnson?s "You Make It Easy." A breezy love song about breezy commitment. Listen. To that solo. To those harmonies. Dare yourself not to sing along. Try to play "name the influences" and you will have fun but you will fail.
Then check out "Hurricane," and hear Dan Murphy, singing his guts out and having, like the title track he co-penned says, "another fine day." Dig Louris and Jeff Tweedy?s "Listen Joe," and how they sing to themselves and a long-gone friend, "surprise, surprise, everyone dies."
Listen. To what every new breed that comes along calls "old school," to sounds baked into these guys since the days of vinyl. Feel the embers of all the mystics, all the Gram Parsons and Eagles and Zeppelin and Buzzcocks and Flaming Lips and Gorillaz (Kraig?s fave of the moment) records and all the rest that they?ve ingested. Truly, these cats have forgotten more records than the rest of us have sold to the used record store.
"Don?t it blow your mind like the first time? The dream is never over," they ask, on "Corvette," with the exuberance of high-schoolers playing together in the garage for the first of many times. Listen. To "Corvette". Then listen to Louris?s "Gone". They have been through death and love and war and all the other vagaries of middle age in these new Middle Ages, and this is the sound of them coming out the other side ? or at least trying to come out the other side ? with friendship and rock ?n? roll as their guides.
Jeff Tweedy might carry the name recognition, but the rest of his band-on-the-side carries the mail on the fourth release from this Midwest all-star group. Though the Wilco leader teams with the Jayhawks' Gary Louris on a pair of nimble pop songs--the elegantly strummed "Listen Joe" and Kinks cover "Strangers"--it's Louris who's clearly at the head of the class with self-assured vocals ("Another Fine Day," "Think About Yourself"), lush harmonies ("Long Time Ago") and those unmistakable guitar leads ("Frying Pan Eyes"). Soul Asylum guitarist Dan Murphy's obligatory rocker "Hurricane" is a high point, as is the album's lead track "You Make It Easy," which has Kraig Johnson warbling over a thumping piano lead and chunky fuzz guitar. But most welcome among the 15 songs are two contributions from Louris's fellow Jayhawk Marc Perlman: the refreshing "Corvette" and "Cure for This," a '60s-speckled pop song sung by Muni Loco, the wife of producer Paco Loco and the first female to grace a recording by Golden Smog. --Scott Holter
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