3 out of 5

Label: Pentimento

Producer: Dan Potthast and Tomas Kalnoky (Tracking By)

Dan P. has been doing the simple and smart lyrical thing since his days in Mu330.  When he fully stepped in as lead of the band with Crab Rangoon, there was a shift away from ska-punk toward a rockier sound, and the lyrics – while maintaining the slightly silly nature of the style – shifted from poppy, catchy choruses to more soulful tracks.  Even when the dude was delivering a straight-forward rocker or more typical ska track, his next-door-neighbor friendly tone that instantly breaks into a most satisfying crackly shout would carry the track, and carry the listener through some sometimes cheesy lyrics into a smooth line, or something that exposes an overall smile behind the song, an awareness of the fluff.

The band developed and spat out a straight-forward 2nd wave ska sounding record that seemed to distill some of Dan’s songwriting chops (which proved that he had a knack for twisting simple tunes into absolutely memorable melodies), but repeated listens exposed the value of what he was doing: the attempt at getting to, perhaps, a pure sound.  And on to his solo work (which came out during Mu330, I believe), where the layers were peeled back to campfire strum levels, but Dan’s talents still shone through.

So it’d been a while and Mr. Potthast is just one of those dudes you hope never stops making tracks.  The Stitch-Up happened, in weird wish fulfillment land where suddenly the boy in a Missouri band was working, in some capacity, with my omg-he’s-a-genius boy love Tomas Kalnoky of Streetlight Manifesto.  What makes sense?  Well, we’ve tried different arrangements of punk, rock, acoustic, and ska, so now Dan tries his hand at pop-rock.  Aaand, well, it’s pretty generic.  It gets off to a great start, the upbeat ‘Grid Plan’ gives us a fun chorus, a ton of vocal range and passion, and a good balance of sound – this ain’t gonna be a heavy band, but capable of making some noise, backed up by Kalnoky’s crystal clear production style.  (I think.  Tracking…?)  The title track keeps the pace, and then ‘Creatures’ gets confusing, a chorus lost in a whole bunch of words, but that’s fine, we’re three tracks in so you’re allowed to experiment.  But.. the album takes a big pause for the whole middle portion for more campfire stuff.  They’re totally competent pop tracks, nod-worthy if you tune in, but lacking in enough energy to grab attention.  It’s great background, inoffensive, and with enough flair sonically to turn someone onto Dan’s pleasant sound if they walk in the room, but strung together as an album…

Just in time to remind you that this is a band capable of shaking things up, last track ‘Redefining Everything’ does the quiet to loud thing really well and brings back that lyrical inventiveness and tweaked songwriting.  It’s more Potthast.  It’s not all aces (and indeed its mostly deuces), but it has its highlights and stretches Dan’s music muscles to stay in the game.