Christiaan Paladino

Dan Smith

Flagpole isn’t really sure how many members of the Danielson Famile are playing this show, but you can be sure that a) Dan Smith will be there and b) it’s somewhere between one and all of them. The newest album Ships involves a lot of guest artists, from Sufjan Stevens to Deerhoof, and seems to be getting the band the best press of its life, despite its step back in fervor.

There's a feeling, though, that the meandering quality of the album will at least be reduced in concert if not completely minimized. Last time Smith swung through town, he was encased inside a tree costume on-stage, leading to much in the way of sweatiness, but also magic. The timing is a bit odd for the show, as people tend to lean more to Bruce Springsteen and George Thorogood on our most patriotic of holidays, but it’s also appropriate in its oddness. The Danielson effort has always involved iconoclasm of several varieties - indie rock, art school, Pentacostalism - and isn’t that one of the underlying impulses of this country as well? We like to combine traditionalism with a big middle finger to the man (not that those are necessarily opposites; they may, in fact, overlap), and you can stretch that to include a band like this if you’re feeling academic.

But after a day spent eating grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, drinking much cheap beer and lighting things on fire to watch them explode, it seems nice to switch pace for something equally American, by way of New Jersey, but more metaphorically than actually fiery. Smith burns with the creative spirit as much as the holy one, and who’s to say they’re not the same thing?