David Karsten Daniels Sharp Teeth

The press release for this album utterly bewildered me: an object lesson in the dangers of skim reading. Two names stood out: Steve Reich and John Cage. So, expecting busted old joannas and Delia Derbyshire-style round-the-building tape loops, I chucked this on, only to have my anagnorisis utterly popped. Daniels has instead produced an album of heartfelt American folk in the best Southern tradition.

Daniels is a based in North Carolina, a singer-songwriter with a thoroughly piebald background: a hymn singer as a child, he undertook formal university studies of composition, theory and free improvisation and performance. As it turns out, the Reich and Cage references are a red herring: earlier influences in his wilder, freakier youthful efforts, now passed over in favour of rich orchestration, grand string arrangements and heartgrabbing chorals.

Lyrically, Sharp Teeth deals with moral ambiguity, exploring issues of right and wrong; there's a spiritual if not a religious feel to this, indeed a suspicion that what is at stake is all that religion can't or doesn't want to explain. Musically, we have everything from Nashville slide guitars, Dixie jazz, and the kind of major chords of which Adem would be proud.

There are also the tunes to match: Scripts is an absolute standout, a sing-a-long standard that can raise both a smile and a tear. File under epic folk and enjoy.