By Omar Tanamly (December 8, 2004)

Rating:

About a week ago, a friend of mine lent me the ska band Potshot’s CD, "Dance to the Potshot Record." With an open mind, I cued my discman to play and sat quietly as I began my first experience with the 16-song release on Asian Man Records. The curious sextet, hailing from faraway Japan, begin the CD with one of its shortest tracks, a virtually instrumental introduction that first grasped my attention. The song, titled "To Hell with Potshot," is structured around a grabbing horn riff that, consistently repeated all through the minute and a half long track, I could have sworn I’d heard before. The track also showcased, after about a minute, a basic but enticing instrumental, singer Ryoji’s voice, undeniably the most unique part of the band’s repertoire.

For whatever reason, Ryoji and the crew decided that they would sing in English and disregarding the fact that it’s barely intelligible, after a song or three it managed to get on my nerves quite a bit. Its nasal quality and the way Ryoji puts surprising stress on all the wrong syllables tend to detract from the package as a whole. He tends to intentionally stutter and even short words are broken up with his peculiar style. But the guy still can, and should be admired for doing this thing, because if you can get past the vocals, the music should keep you satisfied for a while.

Bass lines are always something I pay close attention to in ska music, and veteran bassist Katsuya doesn’t let me down. His interwoven twists, quick fills, and solid rhythm complement the guitars and horns nicely, and the bass marks easily the CD’s high points. Potshot’s brass section, complete with trumpet and trombone players (Mitchy and Chucky, respectively), Potshot’s defining attribute as a ska band work well together, crafting simple but fun horn parts.

Yet as a whole, the music is pretty slow, and doesn’t strike me as anything ground-breaking, not that it should be expected to. These guys seem to have fun playing and deliver 16 up-beat tracks that I can, for the most part, listen to and enjoy as background music as I do my math homework, or write a review like this. But really, I can only push this disc for so long because after about 10 songs, it’s enough to put me to sleep. The energy, for the most part, is lacking, and while dancing to the Potshot record may have once been feasible, it becomes a chore at something like 19 minutes in. By no means a genre-splitting or mind-blowing release, Potshot’s "Dance to the Potshot Record," is decent, at best, yet I enjoyed listening to it while it lasted. Who knows, you may get into them quicker than I did and, given the chance, I propose that Potshot could do good things. I still think it would have been cooler if the words were sung in Japanese.