Songs can be many things at once-- benchmarks of musicological progress, amusement parks and lecture halls, personality litmus and social currency. What any of this means in relation to music is constantly changing, but songs, like all stories, have one invariable function: To raise a human voice against loneliness and anxiety. Eschewing the complex calculus of what makes music "good," David Karsten Daniels' first widely available LP, Sharp Teeth, is a reminder of what makes it necessary. Daniels is interested in little besides telling you a few stories you've probably heard before, in the familiar way that you've heard them, creating some truly arresting musical moments along the way.
It requires a lot of skill to make the familiar sing seductively to an audience accustomed to novelty, and Daniels turns his creative imagination toward balancing the wheel instead of inventing a new one. If his indie-folk instrumentation and allegorical lyrics are staunchly post-Will Oldham in character, Daniels' whip-smart composition and unequivocal delivery distinguish his music in that crowded field. Sharp Teeth also evokes a folky Built to Spill with Daniels' reedy yet resonant voice and arrangements that amplify with each sweeping pass. "The Dream Before the Ring That Woke Me", the song-in-the-round that most purely expresses this aspect of Daniels' songwriting, swirls around one refrain: "There is a feeling you just can't explain/ There is a joy that you can't contain." It starts with just Daniels' voice and an acoustic strum, and then gradually introduces an angelic chorus, flickering organs, a supple rhythm section, and honeyed strings. By the song's close, it's bursting at its incandescent seams.
These tactics-- the majestic crescendo and the use of musical embellishments to underscore lyrical themes-- recur throughout the album. Amid the wispy blues of "Jesus and the Devil", which brims with offhanded religious doubt and clever inversions, sudden bleating horns spill out like "the road [that] is long". On "Minnows", busy-bee strings flit, building a pressure that hitches, pauses, and exhales satisfyingly into a magisterial chorus. "Beast" and "We Go Right On" follow suit, beginning tremulously and closing emphatically. In "American Pastime", Daniels sings that he's "not cut out for the major leagues." Given indie-folk's meager foothold in the mainstream, he's probably right, but there's nothing minor about his talent.
