Release Date: February 21, 2011
Danielson is a difficult band to describe. You could call them indie/gospel/pop as performed for a child’s birthday party and be pretty close, but that still wouldn’t quite encapsulate it.
Fronted by the sometimes-screechy-sometimes-smooth falsetto-voiced Daniel Smith and comprising a revolving troupe of no less than 10 others (occasionally including indie-folk legend Sufjan Stevens), Danielson is a band that dabbles in pop experimentation with a childlike enthusiasm for discovery. A childlike enthusiasm that, on the latest release, The Best of Gloucester County, is unfortunately hit-or-miss.
When the sound works, it works well. The first track, “Complimentary Dismemberment Insurance,” starts the album off strong with catchy acoustic guitar riffs and an effective use of emotional tone and volume shifts. “We are being led to places we don’t know but surely do know,” sings Smith during a surprisingly introspective pause that eventually erupts back into the jerky, joyous chorus.
Though there are sometimes clear chorus and verse patterns, Danielson is not the sort of band to get bogged down by traditional song structure, and on several tracks that plays in very exciting ways.
When this band wants to try something new, it can make music that is fluid and formless, but still beautiful.
It’s too bad that a number of songs on the album are too simple to mesh with the elaborate and experimental tracks that work so well. The worst offender is “People’s Partay.” The piano-driven verses sounds at worst like a jingle from a particularly cheesy local commercial, or at best like music written for a children’s album. It is also frustratingly simple lyrically, with none of the personal introspection, or spiritual symbolism that is such a driving force for most of the other tracks; it leaves the song feeling comparatively emotionally shallow. It does, however, match the upbeat mood that is dominant throughout the rest of the album.
This album is very similar to Danielson’s last LP, Ships. Where Ships was widely considered the band’s masterpiece, The Best of Gloucester County will likely be remembered as an unsuccessful follow-up. Many of the ideas that were revolutionary or exciting when first used in Ships are brought out again in this album, but much of the magic is gone.
It is okay to release an album that fine-tunes a sound rather than reinvents it, but this band’s appeal is so grounded in the discovery of the new and the weird that a repeat performance doesn’t pack much punch.
Though some of the initial appeal is gone, Danielson’s The Best of Gloucester County is not a wasted effort, nor a bad album. It is an album that, while fun and lighthearted, has a few moments that are too simple to be exciting and possesses a sound altogether too similar to Danielson’s earlier works.
Danielson The Best of Gloucester County Tracklist:
- “Complimentary Dismemberment Insurance”
- “This Day Is a Loaf”
- “Grow Up”
- “Lil Norge”
- “But I Don’t Wanna Sing About Guitars”
- “People’s Partay”
- “Olympic Portions”
- “You Sleep Good Now”
- “Hovering Above That Hill”
- “Denominator Bluise”
- “Hosanna In the Forest”
