David Karsten Daniels — Sharp Teeth

Sharp Teeth stands as David Karsten Daniels first widely avaible album & his first for Fat cat records. Coming in a rather nicely macabre cartoon cover- It gives us twelve tracks of  singer songwriter folk come indie tracks, that are sprinkled with a collection of other  musically flakes, raising pop chorus, rocked out moments & some quirky instrumental touches

It starts off very promising with the growing hippy sing along vibe of The dream  before the phone ran that woke me, which begins with nice earthy guitar strums, Daniels vocals joined by a female voice. Then the track builds adding more vocals & instruments, like guitar and bass and soaring strings, all  making a wonderfully mood raising opener. Sadly this is the high point of the record, after this he slips into sounding rather pedestrian Folk/ indie. Sound like a less clever and not so experimental Fog, or even lilike a Bonny ‘Prince’ Charlie clone in places. May be I’m been a little unfair- there are some pleasant and inventive   moments here and there, but it just sounds too Familiar. Too little of his own sound and personality seems to shine through, it just feels like a collection of his influences, which is fair enough, but  his own stamp is lacking too often.

A rather disappointing debut that’s pleasant enough, but lacks that spark of originality. Hopefully he’ll develop the more interesting and original elements found here and there on Shape Teeth- to make a more rewarding album in the future