Smog offers something meaningful on the side

The name of the band Smog is often officially rendered (Smog), and at the Troubadour on Friday the Chicago act’s Bill Callahan indeed worked inside life’s parentheses. His are the asides, the digressions, the little bits and bombs that aren’t the actual stories, but the things beyond or beside the stories. After all, the stories themselves have already been told, and told well, by Willie Nelson and Lou Reed, among other leading lights Callahan runs through his distinctly Midwestern prism.

Friday’s show was all about the things not told, from odd musings (“What would my wife say, if I was married?” from “Morality,” a song from the new album “Supper”) to existential soliloquies (such as 1997’s “To Be of Use”). The audience can fill in the rest just fine.

With singer-guitarist Callahan’s somber delivery and his often two- or three-chord meditations rendered with the muted yet surprisingly full accompaniment of three support musicians, it was a rich yet melancholy experience, akin to reading a Richard Ford novel.

In the current musical world, Smog’s Americana minimalism stands alongside better-known Wilco, Will Oldham and Lambchop, though Callahan’s been on the scene longer than most -- a sort of parenthetical figure, but essential nonetheless.