Golden Smog has always been one of those super groups that seemingly has gone unnoticed since their inception in 1992. Strange considering the three main members consist of Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco; not a slouch among them. It's been eight years since the last Golden Smog release and since The Jayhawks seem to be on permanent hiatus and Soul Asylum never make a blip on the radar anymore, I guess Louris, Murphy and former Jayhawks Marc Perlman and Keith Jarret Johnson needed something to do. Why not revive this old fossil then?

It's great for listeners of Alt-Country that they did, because Another Fine Day is just brimming with ideas. At 15 tracks and over an hour in length the biggest concern is overkill, but everything here works to a tee. Louris sounds superb as always and shows he's been missed on the stupendous self-titled track. Dan Murphy who mostly always plays second fiddle to Dave Pirner in Soul Asylum gets his chance to shine on stellar tracks such as "Hurricane" and "Never Felt Before." Johnson surprisingly has most of the vocals on Another Fine Day and his "You Make It Easy" and "5-22-02" prove that it wasn't such a bad move. Even Tweedy, who is a very busy cat these days between Wilco and Loose Fur, shows up for a few tracks and wouldn't you know it, he completely steals the show. His acoustic "Long Time Ago" along with Louris is my absolute favorite here, and the cover of Dave Davies' "Strangers" is phenomenal. Who knows, with the The Jayhawks on the backburner these days, we may see a lot more smog on the horizon than we're used to.