Ladyhawk - 'Shots' (Jagjaguwar) Released 07/04/08

Apparently named after the codename of a Superhero character from a series of Spider Girl comics, British Columbia’s Ladyhawk are the kind of geeks you want to invite to the party. On their second album ‘Shots’, they fuse a distinct sense of a North American Indie tradition with a sense of abandon and alcohol fuelled riffs not a million miles away from Neil Young and Crazy horse at their most frazzled and out there. It is a daring formula but one that doesn’t always work.

On the opening ‘I Don’t Always Know What You’re Saying’ and the brilliantly named ‘Corpse Paint’ the plaintive vocals and overlapping guitars build up into pleasing crescendos and exhibit a band that are capable of controlled anguish and infectious melody, like Modest Mouse sometime before Johnny Marr brought the Chic le freak wah wah funk onboard. Better still is the cathartic apocalypse attack of ‘S.T.H.D’, a tune that could well convince us that the four horsemen of the apocalypse have crashed the party but we may as well go down drunk, defiant and laughing. “The blood will flow like tears tonight and the city will rise” may sound like a Slayer lyric but singer Duffy Driediger makes it sound like the best invitation to chaos that we’ve had in quite a while.  

Despite this, on the stoner rock Beatles-aping ‘Fear’ they just sound uninspiring and resigned. (I’ll be your) Ashtray, with its wry talk of ‘Careless Whispers’ has the potential to be an entertaining alternative power ballard (we could do with more of these by the way) but its desperate tone ultimately fails to be engaging and you won’t be continually reaching for the repeat button.

“I know there’s no such thing as endless love” is the recurring lyric of ‘Faces of Death’. At this point, the party is starting to get weird and you’re wondering when the acid fried nihilists will leave so that you can put Spank Rock on, turn it up and dance on tables. It’s the end of the world as we know it (and we don’t feel fine). As a group that seem to specialise in beer soaked space jams, they are initially lots of fun, for sure but you might not want to stay up until dawn with them. Then they go and offer glimpses redemption in the closing trilogy of songs, in particular the anthemic ‘You Ran’ and the delicate reflective harmonies of ‘Ghost Blues’.       
     
Ladyhawk are anything but easy to figure out and we thank them for that. But, there is a lack of immediacy and truly memorable songs on this album, preventing them from being up there with say, Neutral Milk Hotel or Band of Horses. Just like a shot of Jagermeister, this album may improve your night out in the short term but it won’t change your life. The hawk rises but it never truly SOARS!