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Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE)
By Dom Sinacola | 15 May 2007
J.L. Aronson's handmade wonder about Daniel Smith and the Smith family has finally found a DVD release, and while the Special Features read like laundry lists of fan bits and ephemera, the bulk is never too demanding or esoteric to be indulgent. That standard of humility permeates the movie all the way to its open end, and Aronson makes a point to call his contribution a "realiz[ation]" -- pouring over footage, home videos, "field" recordings, interviews, clippings, and every piece of available press as the devoted archivist, building an obsessive collage posing as biography posing as a sort of innocently epic family saga. What Aronson accomplishes so seamlessly is creating an unbridled sense of justification in the film and the musician the film tries to capture, fashioning a mold for artistic justice against the prejudices and typical hang-ups a band like the Danielson Famile often has to face.
We're told, through reminiscing brothers and sisters, that the Famile began in 1994 as Daniel Smith's thesis project for his degree from Rutger's. Dan recruited his Clarksboro, New Jersey family to act as band members, and the love of that blood bond sustains the power of everything the band completes from that point on. The video of the Rutger's performance, strangely resembling a church function, is a nascent foreshadowing of Smith's later bombast; younger percussionist brothers David and Andrew (Andrew was only eleven at the time) lay down an infectious beat, somewhere morbidly between march and a gothic distillation of folk. Daniel has a sashaying mop of hair and a dead serious glare. His voice is unbelievably piercing, but it fits, and though his siblings sing along to the indiscernible lyrics, they own appropriate veneers of nervousness and embarrassment at the utter behest of their leader and older brother. From the onset, we're allowed a big picture of the Danielson career: Daniel's the visionary, the audience seems intrigued but absolutely reluctant, and the whole affair breathes with an intense, uncomfortable sincerity. From Andrew, the youngest, the obvious "baby" of the family, the narrative moves forward only in a progression of siblings -- David then Megan then Rachel with Daniel's childhood friend Chris Palladino thrown in the lineup -- but doesn't much try to give them space to work as individual characters. Danielson and his Famile, that's it, or it's just Br. Danielson plugging away in the studio he's built in his parents' basement, alone, the walls stark and cold while Sufjan's blowing up on tour, Rachel has babies, Chris is with child, and whole academic and social careers get in the way of the rest of the family making music.
But defending the music of Daniel Smith and his family is never the intention of the movie, and it shouldn't be, so too often the focus of interviews, live performances, and montages slips into apology. That's when the innocence and charm of the family members gets heavy, when they act oblivious of the artifice of the film itself. Then again, if Aronson's point is to discuss the artifice the band has to struggle through to get heard, his medium better retain that unadulterated wholesomeness on which Danielson relies.
When the family speaks in voice-over, their lines are straight-laced, doused in lots of simple facts. They have a tall order, after all, telling their generation's story, but in whisking the tale towards the meat of the Famile's musical journey, the voice-overs lean on Daniel as a plot crutch, robbing the movie of their support as more than carriers of montage or friendly choral intonations of pace and praise for Daniel's growth as an artist. For example, Chris's story holds an extra smattering of notice by introducing his friendship with Daniel through a befuddling cartoon but, quickly, Sufjan's brought in and Chris steps back to make way for a different purpose. Chris jokes, "I don't know what Dan's intentions are with Sufjan in the long run, but it is nice to see someone else look so out of place." Chris seems to understand that Dan's calculations dictating artistic image and message usurp the lives of the band and of the contributors. No doubt Dan should be the core of the story.
Appropriately, Stevens is the other main character here, goofy and amiable, something of a gangly, beautiful protégé to Daniel's viscerally commanding work ethic. But Stevens's ride to fame and critical notoriety is only expressed over the odd silence of Daniel's basement studio where he records Brother is to Son (2004). Make no mistake, Daniel Smith is the ego of the film, and he speaks at length of being a conduit for God's will. It's the Holy Spirit, he says and prays, that writes the music, or the message, or whatever it is Dan's trying to accomplish. The indie rock aphorism of his peers is pushed aside: the music isn't the focus, it's God's light, influence, quotidian. Even when that conceit is overwrought in the shadow of Sufjan's careful image hitting the bigtime, the parallels must be made. That's the course of the family's tale, even though Sufjan for so long was an ersatz Andrew and later an ersatz everything.
While Danielson's DIY aesthetic is painted in monochromatic colors, the handmade quality of everything retains a strong sense of purpose. During a discussion of his salesman routine, Dan muses, ".there's something special about the handmade.we enjoy it in our everyday.it's not in this environment where there's this distance, where you can't touch it," and the audience can believe that every sense of pretension in his work has been stripped. Sure, Aronson makes his moves in predictable strides, butting Sufjan's performance of "To Be Alone With You" against scenes of Dan alone at a Public Radio interview or setting up his 9 Fruit Tree (his solo garb) on a deserted stage while his parents discuss the difficulty of making a living in music. Still, the point of Dan's and the Famile's work becomes all the more accessible. Similarly, an album like Ships (2006) doesn't hide anything; the rhythm will be stuttered, the chords will be bright and full, the vocals mixed high and brutal. It's what to expect. It's relatable.
In the end, though, the sincerity of Daniel's work is what translates clearest. Talking to Daniel before his All Tomorrow Parties performance, curator Steve Albini jokes about people being discouraged against the Christian notions in Danielson's music, but expresses his disgust at the lack of sincerity in peoples' preconceptions. This is Albini of course, whose own sincerity is often a touchy point, but Dan responds, "I wish there was a real Christian music industry, or Christian music scene, put it that way.Because then what it would be doing is they would be selling CDs for eight dollars, they would be giving full artistic license, encouraging creativity.It would be really doing the things Christ did and continues to do." Already, themes of the film jumble, coalesce, and splinter again. Everyone's talking about families and crowds and parties, the breadth of groups and bands overwhelming the simple rooms they inhabit. Then Dan's alone, writing with the Lord, alone again in the way he started his career, and then he's making Ships, attempting to bring together an album's worth of a career's expanse. In that sense, as the film closes with subtitled updates about everyone, the movie's not exactly about Daniel Smith. He's the beaming demagogue. It's more a snapshot of the community he constantly talks about, trusting in his friends and loved ones, building a family because that's what God wants. Like the Smith patriarch says at a barbecue, "We just wanted more people in the party."
Thankfully, Aronson never stalls in the kind of cynicism natural for a picture like Danielson's. Where The Devil and Daniel Johnston -- an example I use because Johnston appears briefly in Aronson's film, slipping an ugly counterpoint (or corollary) into Daniel Smith's undaunted pursuit of a singular vision -- has the drama of Johnston's recession into manic depression, Danielson: A Family Movie is a polite and gracious two hours, never attempting to find heartbreak in all the pleasant conversations and pious glances at the big wide world about, but never seeming more than a slight and admirable piece of devotion. In fact, trying to figure out who did what on the hodgepodge film is difficult, much like trying to figure that out on Ships. The pursuit of such detail is fruitless, because the point never was to figure out the conscripted members, but to just admire the unbelievable gelling of so many busy minds. Rarely can an enterprise like that work fully, especially in music and promotional "scenes" where cynicism easily gains hold as drama unfolds. That in itself is a nice, tidy testament to the power of the familial glue at work.
In only one moment is there a stark admission of doubt, right in the smack-dab middle of the piece, when David stands on a balcony in Paris with Chris, pondering his own directionless future. What will happen to the band? Are they going to become a gimmick? What's left to experiment with? Can the family hold together? "It's a hard life, being in music," their mother slowly states somewhere else in the movie. Chris props a pipe on his lips, meditating instead of smoking. We're nudged to do the same, to appreciate instead of judge, which, we think picking at our lower lip, is task enough.
We're told, through reminiscing brothers and sisters, that the Famile began in 1994 as Daniel Smith's thesis project for his degree from Rutger's. Dan recruited his Clarksboro, New Jersey family to act as band members, and the love of that blood bond sustains the power of everything the band completes from that point on. The video of the Rutger's performance, strangely resembling a church function, is a nascent foreshadowing of Smith's later bombast; younger percussionist brothers David and Andrew (Andrew was only eleven at the time) lay down an infectious beat, somewhere morbidly between march and a gothic distillation of folk. Daniel has a sashaying mop of hair and a dead serious glare. His voice is unbelievably piercing, but it fits, and though his siblings sing along to the indiscernible lyrics, they own appropriate veneers of nervousness and embarrassment at the utter behest of their leader and older brother. From the onset, we're allowed a big picture of the Danielson career: Daniel's the visionary, the audience seems intrigued but absolutely reluctant, and the whole affair breathes with an intense, uncomfortable sincerity. From Andrew, the youngest, the obvious "baby" of the family, the narrative moves forward only in a progression of siblings -- David then Megan then Rachel with Daniel's childhood friend Chris Palladino thrown in the lineup -- but doesn't much try to give them space to work as individual characters. Danielson and his Famile, that's it, or it's just Br. Danielson plugging away in the studio he's built in his parents' basement, alone, the walls stark and cold while Sufjan's blowing up on tour, Rachel has babies, Chris is with child, and whole academic and social careers get in the way of the rest of the family making music.
But defending the music of Daniel Smith and his family is never the intention of the movie, and it shouldn't be, so too often the focus of interviews, live performances, and montages slips into apology. That's when the innocence and charm of the family members gets heavy, when they act oblivious of the artifice of the film itself. Then again, if Aronson's point is to discuss the artifice the band has to struggle through to get heard, his medium better retain that unadulterated wholesomeness on which Danielson relies.
When the family speaks in voice-over, their lines are straight-laced, doused in lots of simple facts. They have a tall order, after all, telling their generation's story, but in whisking the tale towards the meat of the Famile's musical journey, the voice-overs lean on Daniel as a plot crutch, robbing the movie of their support as more than carriers of montage or friendly choral intonations of pace and praise for Daniel's growth as an artist. For example, Chris's story holds an extra smattering of notice by introducing his friendship with Daniel through a befuddling cartoon but, quickly, Sufjan's brought in and Chris steps back to make way for a different purpose. Chris jokes, "I don't know what Dan's intentions are with Sufjan in the long run, but it is nice to see someone else look so out of place." Chris seems to understand that Dan's calculations dictating artistic image and message usurp the lives of the band and of the contributors. No doubt Dan should be the core of the story.
Appropriately, Stevens is the other main character here, goofy and amiable, something of a gangly, beautiful protégé to Daniel's viscerally commanding work ethic. But Stevens's ride to fame and critical notoriety is only expressed over the odd silence of Daniel's basement studio where he records Brother is to Son (2004). Make no mistake, Daniel Smith is the ego of the film, and he speaks at length of being a conduit for God's will. It's the Holy Spirit, he says and prays, that writes the music, or the message, or whatever it is Dan's trying to accomplish. The indie rock aphorism of his peers is pushed aside: the music isn't the focus, it's God's light, influence, quotidian. Even when that conceit is overwrought in the shadow of Sufjan's careful image hitting the bigtime, the parallels must be made. That's the course of the family's tale, even though Sufjan for so long was an ersatz Andrew and later an ersatz everything.
While Danielson's DIY aesthetic is painted in monochromatic colors, the handmade quality of everything retains a strong sense of purpose. During a discussion of his salesman routine, Dan muses, ".there's something special about the handmade.we enjoy it in our everyday.it's not in this environment where there's this distance, where you can't touch it," and the audience can believe that every sense of pretension in his work has been stripped. Sure, Aronson makes his moves in predictable strides, butting Sufjan's performance of "To Be Alone With You" against scenes of Dan alone at a Public Radio interview or setting up his 9 Fruit Tree (his solo garb) on a deserted stage while his parents discuss the difficulty of making a living in music. Still, the point of Dan's and the Famile's work becomes all the more accessible. Similarly, an album like Ships (2006) doesn't hide anything; the rhythm will be stuttered, the chords will be bright and full, the vocals mixed high and brutal. It's what to expect. It's relatable.
In the end, though, the sincerity of Daniel's work is what translates clearest. Talking to Daniel before his All Tomorrow Parties performance, curator Steve Albini jokes about people being discouraged against the Christian notions in Danielson's music, but expresses his disgust at the lack of sincerity in peoples' preconceptions. This is Albini of course, whose own sincerity is often a touchy point, but Dan responds, "I wish there was a real Christian music industry, or Christian music scene, put it that way.Because then what it would be doing is they would be selling CDs for eight dollars, they would be giving full artistic license, encouraging creativity.It would be really doing the things Christ did and continues to do." Already, themes of the film jumble, coalesce, and splinter again. Everyone's talking about families and crowds and parties, the breadth of groups and bands overwhelming the simple rooms they inhabit. Then Dan's alone, writing with the Lord, alone again in the way he started his career, and then he's making Ships, attempting to bring together an album's worth of a career's expanse. In that sense, as the film closes with subtitled updates about everyone, the movie's not exactly about Daniel Smith. He's the beaming demagogue. It's more a snapshot of the community he constantly talks about, trusting in his friends and loved ones, building a family because that's what God wants. Like the Smith patriarch says at a barbecue, "We just wanted more people in the party."
Thankfully, Aronson never stalls in the kind of cynicism natural for a picture like Danielson's. Where The Devil and Daniel Johnston -- an example I use because Johnston appears briefly in Aronson's film, slipping an ugly counterpoint (or corollary) into Daniel Smith's undaunted pursuit of a singular vision -- has the drama of Johnston's recession into manic depression, Danielson: A Family Movie is a polite and gracious two hours, never attempting to find heartbreak in all the pleasant conversations and pious glances at the big wide world about, but never seeming more than a slight and admirable piece of devotion. In fact, trying to figure out who did what on the hodgepodge film is difficult, much like trying to figure that out on Ships. The pursuit of such detail is fruitless, because the point never was to figure out the conscripted members, but to just admire the unbelievable gelling of so many busy minds. Rarely can an enterprise like that work fully, especially in music and promotional "scenes" where cynicism easily gains hold as drama unfolds. That in itself is a nice, tidy testament to the power of the familial glue at work.
In only one moment is there a stark admission of doubt, right in the smack-dab middle of the piece, when David stands on a balcony in Paris with Chris, pondering his own directionless future. What will happen to the band? Are they going to become a gimmick? What's left to experiment with? Can the family hold together? "It's a hard life, being in music," their mother slowly states somewhere else in the movie. Chris props a pipe on his lips, meditating instead of smoking. We're nudged to do the same, to appreciate instead of judge, which, we think picking at our lower lip, is task enough.