Golden Smog Ranges Past Country Rock

Golden Smog is an inter-band jam with a structured agenda. Its object is to maintain a loose, informal spirit while making sure that the singing and playing are more right than ragged. It was right enough, and then some, as the six Midwesterners, most of them lower-magnitude stars of dusty, unpretentious, country-tinged rock, held forth on Saturday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

Golden Smog’s assets included two strong singers, high-and-reedy Gary Louris of the Jayhawks and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, a fine, soulfully twangy disciple of Gram Parsons. Sidekicks Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum and Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run won’t win any warbling contests, but their rough-hewn vocal styles were applied in spots where they could work well.

At first, it seemed that we were in for an evening of pleasant but not invigorating immersion in the comfortable waters of sweet melancholy as Golden Smog settled into the easygoing currents of its album, “Down By the Old Mainstream.”

But the agenda proved to be more ambitious. A version of Love’s 1966-vintage heroin warning “Signed D.C.” and such exuberant fare as Blondie’s “Hanging on the Telephone” and “Who Loves the Sun?” by the Velvet Underground allowed the band to range beyond its country comforts and bittersweet pleasures.