Americana at its best
Are we getting old or is it really the case that most of the great album music is coming from older guys? Our man looks at Golden Smog’s Another Fine Day
Well what the hell was all that about? 2006 â a year when British bands produced some of the best power pop singles youâre ever likely to hear but the great albums all came from the American pensioner party.
Peruse just about any music magazineâs albums of the year and youâll find a posse of old folk hogging the top table. Bob Dylanâs stomp through slurry blues was the top pick of a fair number of muso hacks. Neil Young produced the angriest political rant not just of the year but of the century so far. And Bruce Springsteen went all New Orleans vaudeville on us with the bizarre back catalogue of Pete Seeger and triumphed spectacularly. Even the old walrus David Crosby contributed to the yearâs offerings.
One album that slipped under most peopleâs radar, though, was Another Fine Day by Golden Smog. And if youâre a lover of tuneful Americana and you donât own this, then you should. While youâre at it, you should be digging out the bandâs previous two albums Weird Talesand Down By The Old Mainstream too.
Golden Smog is an occasional project featuring members of Soul Asylum and Run Westy Run as well as Wilcoâs Jeff Tweedy and Gary Louris of The Jayhawks. Effectively, these last two are alternative countryâs answer to The Beatles, with Tweedy in the Lennon role and Louris as McCartney.
That their respective groups arenât far bigger is both an astonishment and a sin. It may be, though, that in the case of The Jayhawks, itâs a case of too much suga.....
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By Rob Allanson
Section : Whisky and Music
Page number : 39
