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Ships

by

Danielson

 
Ships
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Avg: 3.5 (279 ratings)

The Famile that plays together stays together.

  • We Say...

    Review by J. Edward Keyes

    It's been five years since the last Danielson family outing, and in that time Famile friend and co-conspirator Sufjan Stevens has gone from Midwest obscurity to Lincoln Center showpiece, Christian rock bands like Switchfoot and Relient K have made inroads on the pop charts and Mel Gibson turned holy masochism into mountains of mammon. While chief Famile member Daniel Smith may share their pilgrims' faith, it's unlikely that he'll duplicate their success. Smith's approach to songwriting is decidedly cockeyed, but that's one of the things that makes Ships such a singular treasure. Joyful, raucous, rowdy and triumphant, Ships is the best Danielson record by miles, full of odd angles and strange angels and the kind of childlike guilelessness that guides camels through drinking straws.

    The record isn't credited to the Famile proper because it's a collaboration — members of Deerhoof, Why? and Serena Maneesh show up to strum and to sing — but the soul of Ships is unquestionably Smith's. It's his rapturous yelp that directs the action and his screwball guitar playing that dictates the songs' structure. People gripe about Smith's singing style (somewhere between Frank Black and Blossom Dearie), but it's hard to imagine the songs here without it. He sails and soars over the cartoonish calliope whistles in "Two Sitting Ducks" and is right out in front of the massive gospel choir that materializes near the end of "Cast It at the Setting Sail." Smith is a master of the odd construction, and his compositions are magnificent labyrinths that never go where you think they will.

    And ultimately, that's what makes Ships such ridiculous bliss: those weird turns, those slippery time signatures, those brass band ambushes that turn up mid-song and pack the same giddy shock as a puppet from a jack-in-the-box. More than just a stylistic contrivance, the weird assembly of Smith's songs is part of their charm — they teach you how to listen to them as they go along. They start and stop, stomp and sway, some of them feeling like a series of choruses strung one right after another. Ships is a record gilded with glee, and the kind of record that demands (and rewards) participation in its strange, wonderful rapture. Or to put it another way: Make a joyful noise, all ye people.

  • They Say...

    Review by James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide

    Since the debut of his legendary audio senior thesis for Rutgers in 1995, Daniel Smith has been crafting an alternate universe where the most wildly subversive, joyous, and demented music in the non-secular world is filtered through a Christian viewfinder, albeit a decidedly skewed one. The success of Ships, the latest from the prolific, giant tree-suit wearing anomaly, depends entirely on the listener's opinion of the success of the Danielson empire. For years, Smith has hinted at gathering all of his musical brethren (Sufjan Stevens, Danielson Famile, Half Handed Cloud, Deerhoof, etc.) into the same room to celebrate the genre he helped popularize for a session to end all sessions. The resulting 11 tracks do not disappoint, striking the perfect balance between dissonance and melody with a backbeat that shakes the foundations of everything he's tried before. This is Smith's Led Zeppelin 1, 2, 3, and 4 all wrapped up into one giant boot stomp of a record, one that will no doubt please longtime followers and convert a few new ones into the fold. Lyrically, Smith is as colorful and incomprehensible as ever, trading childhood imagery for fluidity and astute observation for parable, with the notion of nautical camaraderie at its core. Standout cuts like "Did I Step on Your Trumpet," "Ship the Majestic Suffix," and the surprisingly straightforward closer "Five Stars and Two Thumbs Up" sound as communal as they read, and like every other song on the glorious Ships, they render the listener speechless. Highly recommended.

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