Album of the Week: Danielson- Ships

If there's one thread running through indie rock, it's the constant struggle between authenticity and sincerity vs. irony and sarcasm. Not that bands can't tap into both, but many indie rockers end up going so far into the overly clever realm, piling on so much irony and sarcasm into their act that you can't believe a word that comes out of their mouth. At the same time, because of the proliferation of overly coy indie rock bands, it's hard to tell if the other ones mean it or not. Such is the case in point with Danielson, an overtly or understatedly Christian band made up of an actual family (hence why they sometimes perform under the name Danielson Family). For years people questioned the sincerity of the act, suggesting that someone so odd and quirky couldn't really mean what he was singing, dressing his band in nurse uniforms to symbolize the spiritual healing the audience was undertaking, and donning a tree costume himself to reference the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

People forget, of course, that indie rock has never been a terribly successful genre. To suggest that Danielson was using Christianity to gain publicity and pretend to be a weird band misses the point, since the band couldn't hope to gain much in the process. No, indie rock has always been the place where the freaks and oddities go to make their music free of outside influence. Danielson are simply too strange and not overtly Christian enough to fit on those modern Christian music compilations you see advertised on TV. Moreover, they're too good for it. For, with the release of Ships in 2006, the indie rock world came to realize the truth: whether or not you're Christian doesn't matter, because this album was some of the best music of that year.

Ironically, the only caveat emptor I can make about this music has nothing to do with its spirituality. I've never detected enough Christian-ness about the album to consider it fully sacred, and I doubt if anyone listening to it who didn't know about the band's story could hear it. No, the problem is Daniel Smith (aka Brother Daniel, the band's leader) and his voice. As is typical with most great indie rock bands, he has a very distinctive set of vocal cords--in this case, very high pitched, squeaky, and sometimes borderline shrill. It's not that he can't sing, it's that the way he sings is destined to turn people away from the music. I've come to love his voice, but there is a 'getting used to' period you'll go through with Ships. Think of it as the final litmus test to enjoying this incredible music.

Every song on Ships bursts from the speakers with melodies, sounds, and inventive songwriting. You don't come across such unique indie rock/pop very often, and the whole package has the same uplifting, borderline-orchestral majesty that the Flaming Lips's The Soft Bulletin does. Where that album came to life affirming music through space-pop and psychedelia, Danielson arrives at it via shining Brian Wilson-esque pop and spiky, skewed indie rock. Corralling a list of collaborators and band members about two dozen strong, Daniel Smith managed to craft eleven songs of both immediate satisfaction and lasting flavor. Like the Everlasting Gobstoppber of Willy Wonka film fame, it tastes good right away and never stops revealing new facets of flavor.

At the center of every song lies Smith, and the arrangements, ever malleable, turn around his every dip and turn. Even simpler songs like the closing 'Five Stars And Two Thumps Up' follow his straightforward delivery--watch the way new instruments and background vocals are added and subtracted as he moves through the song. Along with impossibly catchy gems like 'Did I Step On Your Trumpet' come the more complicated and rewarding songs like 'Bloodbook On The Halfshell' and the epic 'Kids Pushing Kids', which keeps bobbing up and down for more than six minutes but never runs out of steam or ideas. Speaking of which, though the album is a hair over 42 minutes, it contains enough meat for a recording twice its length. This isn't a case of "too many things packed, schizophrenically, into a small amount of time" like some Fiery Furnaces albums can be, but more that lesser bands would stretch these ideas out into an album far longer and thus far weaker.

Regardless of what you think of Danielson the band, there's no denying Ships as an album. It's been scarcely two years since its release and I'm afraid it's destined to be forgotten in the endless pile of indie rock best-new-bands that come out every few months. Not to say that the bands that have arrived unto the scene since Ships aren't good, but it's easy to get lost in the discovery of new, exciting things and forget about the true masterpieces of yesteryears. Ships is--I'm going to say it--a true masterpiece, and one of the greatest, most unique indie rock albums of this decade-so-far.