"I'm a little worried about this next one," confessed guitarist Dan Murphy five songs into Golden Smog's set tonight. "I hope it doesn't suck." |

He had reason to be nervous, although not because he was coming to bat after four misfires. Quite the contrary. Frankly, there ought to be a law against any band opening a show with four songs as deliriously perfect in its shimmering songcraft and vocal harmonies as "Looking Forward to Seeing You," "To Call My Own," "Lost Love," and "V." More often than not, such displays are cases of too much too soon that leave nothing for the remaining hour or so other than an increasingly dispirited stretch of also-rans. As Murphy sang on song five, "Reflections on Me," "If we were just a little smarter/Shouldn't been such fire starters/Fires they always burn out."

Only this one didn't. "Reflections on Me," built on a jangling piano line courtesy of Gary Louris and boasting -- like just about every damn song the Smog played tonight -- a chorus to kill for, did nothing but stir the flames even higher. The Minneapolis-based "super group" composed of members of Soul Asylum (Murphy), the Jayhawks (Louris and bassist Marc Pearlman), Wilco (Jeff Tweedy), Big Star (drummer Jody Stephens) and Run Westy Run (Kraig Johnson), played twenty-four songs tonight. Out of those, only one -- the clumsily funky "Keys" -- qualified as a dud. And even that lone misfire had a fine little bridge that made it worth the trouble.

Golden Smog, which started out as a boys-night-out excuse for the collected players to get their ya-yas out playing sloppy covers, has almost accidentally refined itself into a entity every bit as formidable as the members' day bands at their respective best. With "Reflections on Me," "To Call My Own" and "Ill Fated," Murphy made up for a decade of hit-and-miss Soul Asylum, while Louris and Tweedy polished what might well have been Jayhawks and Wilco throwaways ("Won't Be Coming Home," "I Can't Keep From Talking") into fully realized roots-pop jewels. Johnson, the requisite "who's he?"/Jeff Lynne of the lineup, more than held his own next to his marginally better-known band mates with the wistful "Making Waves" and the pissy crowd-pleaser, "He's a Dick."

But that's only half of the picture. Anyone familiar with the individual track records of Tweedy, Louris and Co. should not be surprised at their ability to pen winning songs. The real treat was seeing how much fun they had performing together, swapping instruments and leads and baiting each other with good-natured insults and unabashed praise. "Jody Stephens -- I mean Jody fuckin' Stephens!" exclaimed Tweedy at one point, acknowledging the newest member to the Smog fold and "the only one worth introducing." Indeed, as a Big Star alumnus, Stephens still probably causes his new bandmates to genuflect with cries of "We're not worthy!" But any band of ne'er-do-wells capable of stringing together so many fine originals (and a handful of equally fine covers, including a fabulous take on Split Enz' "I Got You") and delivering them with two-, three- and four-part harmonies that would cause a Byrd to shiver is worthy of Alex Chilton himself. Golden Smog proved tonight that it's that rarest of rock & roll entities: the super group deserving of the prefix by merit of the goods and not the ingredients.

RICHARD SKANSE(December 7, 1998)