David Karsten Daniels

There’s something about broken-hearted guys with guitars that’s hard to resist, and David Karsten Daniels is one such guy. On his fourth album, Sharp Teeth, the North Carolina-based musician searches out every nerve and hits it whether you want him to or not. However, Daniels doesn’t go it alone. In fact, at times he brings roughly 18 other bodies along, making Sharp Teeth more than simply one sad man and a guitar. Bursting movements of horns, strings and voices crash overhead as Daniels’s bruised laments and six-stringed arrangements hold focus. Songs like "Scripts” and "Jesus and the Devil” show equal parts Southern folk, Dixieland jazz and Nashville balladry, while the album’s rousing centrepiece, "Minnows,” grows into a deafening rock epic before collapsing in on itself. But no matter where the record turns, it always stays within the loose confines of pop, never sacrificing enjoyment for art. Overall, Daniels packs a blow not often heard in the singer-songwriter genre and makes Sharp Teeth a poignant, yet worthwhile, trip.