This sixth Danielson album has been a long time coming for Daniel Smith. Ten years since the first recorded Danielson album, head chief and eldest sibling Daniel has always tried to keep the music-making fluid and while it all started as his baby for which he wrote and then directed with the help of his siblings, the Danielson Famile of New Jersey has naturally become more and more of a collaboration and a group.

This is evidenced on Brother Is To Son, on which the entire Famile (siblings Andrew, David, Megan, and Rachel; wife Elin; friends Christian & Melissa Palladino; daughter Lilly), as well as familiar co-conspirators (father Lenny, Sufjan Stevens, Half-Handed Cloud_s John Ringhofer, Soul-Junk_s Glen Galaxy, and Leopulde_s Ted Velykis) are all present supporting Daniel.

All the special-ness that the full band brought to previous Danielson albums is fully intact.

The earnest vocal chirp of head Danielson himself is still there, not to mention the impassioned and punk-inspired hard strum of his acoustic guitar.

He still leads his folk jamboree through the familial boy-girl harmonies as the banjos, bells, piano keys and jaw harp all teem with kinetic energy, like a deconstructionalist jug band led by a man who follows in the bold footsteps of Sun Ra, Don Van Vliet and Johnny Lydon as a truly original art terrorist.

What is unique about this new window into the Danielson brain-cage is its pervasive tenderness, most clearly manifested in the ever-broadening vocal range of Daniel.

Taking a cue from Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home, Brother is to Son opens confidently and intensely while slowly turning in on itself by its second half, on which Smith brings a vulnerability unmatched on his previous five albums.

Oh so humbly does he pose questions of the most personal sort, begging of the listener an openness of spirit.