New Danielson Famile

This band freaks me out. Don't get me wrong?I love gospel music. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Blind Boys of Alabama, all of Aretha's clan. I've always understood it's far better to attempt to hit the note then actually get it so perfect you throw in half-a-dozen minor arpeggios and a quick sliding chromatic scale while waiting for the next to show up. Main singer Daniel Smith takes this credo to incredible lengths: while his real-life sisters sing gorgeous Jackson 5-style harmonies in the background, he simply lets rip with another jarring falsetto. His singing style is a cross between that of Jad Fair and a squawking headless chicken. He's Black Francis on helium or the Carter Family speeded up, the rudimentary American folk of the Shaggs given a fresh and very spooky twist. "I'm a rubbernecker," he squeals with delight on the track of the same name from 1998's Tri-Danielson!!! (Alpha). (There's a CD called Tri-Danielson!!! (Omega) as well.) You'll wish that you could be one too.

Don't believe me? Ask Steve Albini, who slept on an air mattress in southern New Jersey for several nights running just to finish recording this year's Fetch the Compass Kids. Compass Kids is the sort of album made by people who spent their youth with their dad singing gospel and Beatles tunes, mom on harmony, themselves on tambourine, grilled cheese on the cooker, art professors listening in by the back door. It's a solid gone, double-backed Christian groove. It has songs with titles like "We Don't Say Shut Up," "Good News for the Pus Pickers" and "Who the Hello"?which, if nothing else, prove the lasting influence Clerks has had on certain sections of U.S. slacker society. You still doubt my veracity? Ask Kramer, who produced their previous three albums?Alpha, Omega and 1997's seriously disorientated Tell Another Joke at the Ol' Chopping Block, now all available once more via ace Indiana imprint Secretly Canadian. The Danielsons are the only band Kramer's worked with that began sessions by setting up a trampoline in his backyard.

This music is seriously worrying. The Danielson Famile are indeed a family?Daniel, plus five siblings and the odd outsider?and all are born-again Christians, writing songs that reflect their day-to-day spiritual struggle. Daniel, indeed, sees himself as a conduit for God, but he carries out his task with a certain irony and geekiness that one just doesn't associate with his more boorish spiritual kin. "In the Christian music scene, we're criticized for our musical ideas," Daniel told one critic. "They say we can't sing, can't play. But what we do shouldn't be called Christian music. Whatever people are, they should just make music and have it dealt with as music."

This refusal to conform to type leads to some very engaging moments. On "Potty Mouth" (from Alpha), his sisters have a girl group-style conversation that recalls the heyday of the Shangri-La's, translated to a 1988 bowling alley, and ridiculing dates that use profanity. "He leaned in for a kiss/And you know what I did/I just pushed him away and told him where it's at." The start of Alpha sees tout le ensemble yelling the title of the album over and over, like a football chant, before whooping and launching into the next song. Alpha's "Holy Kisser's Block Party" is like what might happen if the massed apartment dwellers of Olympia all joined forces in a Chipmunks playing session, invented the most delightful, delicate harmonies to express their (pure) lust for one another's lips and ran around with squadrons of perky, hyperventilating five-year-olds. The Danielson Famile have an almost unrestrained joy behind their music that is the best frigging advert I've heard for the Christian movement in a very long time. Incidentally, both albums are as different and alike as aluminum and alabaster. Both are total freak masterpieces.

It's rare indeed we hear such a complete lack of restraint in pop. It should only be encouraged.