One of the great everlasting indie rock adages: "If this band ever got on the radio, they'd be huge." I mean, why couldn't Sonic Youth have been the best selling group of the 1990s? What did My Bloody Valentine record if not great pop songs? Wolf Eyes is a classic singles band! Sad but true: This old wisdom doesn't fly. Though it's harbored its share of forward-thinking songwriters and producers, independent music isn't traditionally thought of as user-friendly. And although its recent ascent in popularity has allowed its most accessible bands brief bouts with commercial success, the culture is still mostly populated by artists whose music is too difficult, challenging, or in some cases, annoying, to appeal to anyone but the smallest minority.

In his decade-long run as the ringleader of art-rock collective the Danielson Famile, Daniel Smith has practically defined the term "cult artist." His records-- most of them highly conceptual paeans to God-- can be exhausting, barraging listeners with surprise twists and turns and tangled song fragments. Smith himself has an inimitable vocal style: a twisted melange of bleating, twinging yelps, whoops, and screeches. Yet Smith's discography has yielded him a small but unflaggingly loyal congregation, drawn to music that, above all else, is uninhibitedly gleeful, celebratory, and rallying-- the kind of inspired communal rejoicing that's highly contagious.

Though I've long admired Smith's idiosyncratic vision, navigating his music's quirks and structural obstacles hasn't always been wholly rewarding. But after two years spent refining his approach in his Clarksboro studio, he's re-emerged with an album that serves as the resolution of his recorded output: the spectacular Ships. Harnessing a work ethic so steadfast its presence is felt throughout the album's entire duration, here Smith distills the best and most unique attributes of his sound, and marries that creative concentrate to a grander, more cinematic sensibility. The result is staggeringly triumphant-- the blustering, ambitious consummation of all he's worked toward.

Initially recruiting likeminded noise-pop explorers Deerhoof as his backing band, Smith's ambitions for the album eventually found him corralling a total of 20 musicians, including all Famile past and present, Anticon alumnus Why?, members of Serena Maneesh and Half-Handed Cloud, and longtime Danielson acolyte Sufjan Stevens. So many mismatched contributors could have turned the album into a chaotic melée of disparate ideas. Instead, the sound only grew greater and more colossal with every added hand-- one more instrument in a superdense wall of beautifully ramshackle orchestration that creaks and groans beneath its own enormous weight.

That weight is Ships' cornerstone. None of Smith's previous records-- and in fact, very few indie releases this year-- have flat-out rocked like this one, with blaring trumpets signaling snares to exact their force beneath sweeping multitracked vocal choruses that simply won't stop crescendoing. On standouts like "Ship the Majestic Suffix" and "Bloodbook on the Half Shell", the music builds to such immense heights, and increases tension so far past the expected breaking point, that the inevitable release is nearly dizzying. But Smith also grasps the inherent malleability of such a sizable ensemble, and though he most often uses it to breathe life into the album's darkly apocalyptic overtures, he also wisely crafts shimmering psychedelic passages that prevent it from becoming too claustrophobic.

Of course, while vastly more accessible and streamlined than Smith's other outings, Ships is, in that same vein, very much a cult record. And like other recent, successful cult records-- the Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat, Animal Collective's Sung Tongs, and earlier this week, Scott Walker's The Drift-- the elements that make it so refreshing and exciting to some listeners are certain to put off others. Smith's vocals, for instance, are significantly calmer and less abrasive here than ever, but his charismatic chirps and squawks may be an obstacle for even some seasoned fans of yelpy indie rock. And while they offer Smith the opportunity to achieve a number of unusual melodic feats, the unpredictable song structures may initially throw some listeners for a loop.

Still, the fact that it lacks some of the broader appeal of independent music's more orthodox practitioners also allows more room for the kind of weirdness and experimentation that makes Ships such a fascinating listen, and indeed, such a watershed in Smith's development as an artist. It's the kind of album he may spend the rest of his career trying to top-- and in the closing track, charmingly titled "Five Stars and Two Thumbs Up", he seems to recognize it. With wide-eyed bewilderment, amidst the clash and clang of cymbals and triangles, butterfly flutes, manic guitar strums, ascending eight-part harmonies, and surprise key changes, the euphoric message is reiterated: "Thanks, thaaaaaanks, thaaaaaaaaaanks!!!!"