I can't say for sure when I first heard The Danielson Famile, but my guess was it was around 2000, when my friend Patrick and I were crazy about all things rock and falsetto. The music was almost too strange even for us (and were slamming to Braniac at the time). It's no stretch to say that by 2001 my favorite song of the year was "Good News for the Puss Pickers."



I've been watching a documentary about Danielson this week on Pitchfork.tv. It's broken up into 9 parts, so it's convenient to watch a chapter a day. It might be coming down after today, but you can get it on DVD (it's on netflix). It's called Danielson: A Family Movie.

It's a really great documentary. Danielson just happens to be one of those rare great artists who is almost as smart and thoughtful as he is creative. He's got a Bob Dylan ability to see the shallowness and silliness of his critics. He's smarter than they are and so conversations between him and people who want to focus on his religion are always uncomfortable. But unlike Dylan he's an impossibly nice guy and much more comfortable in his own skin (of course, he isn't famous like Dylan). So when he's forced to deal with his narrow-minded detractors he does so with an air of confidence and love and ambivalence toward their inability to feel the same things he does. He's much more generous to them than they are to him.

The film also does a great job capturing the comradery and love that plays out in his family/band. And you get lots of great footage of performance. You get to see Danielson recording alone. You even get to see his visual art and how he incorporates that in with his music. And it traces the relationship between Sufjan Stevens and Danielson (though it leaves hanging questions about why Stevens is allowed to be Christian without much comment but every critic writing about Danielson has to include qualifier ("I'm not a Christian myself, but . . .")).

So check out the film and then check out the records. You won't be disappointed.