David Karsten Daniels

David Karsten Daniels – Sharp Teeth
While the gnashing teeth of the album cover may be offsetting, David Karsten Daniels album broods only in lyricism: an uncertainty in human relationships and religious ambiguity, the day time nightmares of an metaphysical mind. Or maybe that far too deep. Either way, what he has captured on his Sharp Teeth is rich with majestically arrangements and instrumentation that suggests his study of composition and free improvisation. With a crooning emotive timbre, he digs into each song with a simple opening approach, until the color of orchestration transform them into more fascinating structures. The bee humming strings on "Minnows" build until its clamorous release, exhaling a chorus of voices, cymbal crashes and upper register guitar picking. "I saw Jesus and the Devil, they looked just the same," he quips, turning the phrase into a song of understandable religious questioning. From start to finish, a worthy album waiting for discovery.