The Morning After: Trying Hartz by Danielson

Made up of members of crazy-voiced frontman Daniel Smith’s family, plus anyone else enlisted for evangelicalism, Danielson offered an almost-ridiculous-not-to-like head-bob-ability with breakthrough album Ships, an album made more than a decade into the band’s existence. With that long gestation period, curiosity regarding the development of the band has resulted in Trying Hartz, a packaging of notables from the band’s back catalog that demonstrates the sometimes-annoying evolution of the act from backyard slapdash to refined tune-ism. And this old-song survey presents the argument that unabashedly religious Danielson’s old material was, in fact, far more preachy and prone to moralist declarations than Ships, leading the conclusion-jumper to think the absence of such would-be offenders was the reason the breakthrough album actually broke through.

A further investigation, though, reveals that the old stuff just isn’t as rich as the newer material—the songs are less complete, more fragmented, and the instrumentation often rings a bit pale in comparison to the depth of sound found in the band’s newer work. Still, there are still gems here, and if you can disregard the band’s dogma (and Smith’s high-pitched glee-screams) and put it all in perspective, it may be possible to survive early Danielson’s ideological forcefulness, and, at times, their sheer “fortified compound in the middle of nowhere” scariness, and get to the goodness beneath.

Postponing visceral reactions to the words, sure enough, provides the listener with what is often a fascinating and refreshingly iconoclastic approach to large-scale joy-pop, and sheds light on the growth of the act into one that could make an album as stunning and satisfying as Ships. Songs such as “Body English,” “A No No,” and smile-worthy sing-along “Don’t You Be the Judge,” add breadth to the band’s image, and while there are some misses here—it seems like giving listeners a solid 15-18 tracks would have been a better option than this two-disc 28 track onslaught—altogether this is a nice glimpse into the formative period of one of today’s most eyebrow-raising acts. If anything, it makes it all the more compelling to consider what comes next for the troupe.

Report Card: B