LADYHAWK
Shots
Jagjaguwar

Despite sporting one of the most unimpressively incongrous album covers in recent rocknroll memory (a Halloween vampire mask hanging from a roofbeam), Shots is yet another strong stone heaped in the now-unavoidable Hadrian’s Wall which is Vancouver’s current indie rock scene. Ladyhawk does it again. These much-welcomed Kelowna ex-pats are as helplessly enthralled with 1970s rock influences as their other Strathcona-district hipster brethren, but whereas their labelmates Black Mountain are more comfortable to work with Sabbathon mysticism, Ladyhawk are more into the clang and jangle and swing and blooze of chord progressions in motion without sounding too much like Urge Overkill or Dinosaur Jr. - captured in clean, sparse style by Colin Stewart. 21st-Century sonic poetics from the probing (and probably boozing) hivemind of Mssrs. Hancock, Hawryluk, Peters, et Driediger. Kevin Kane (of Grapes of Wrath / Ginger note) adds himself to the proceedings (special thanks to the unsupportive Kelowna scene for driving your most talented artists to the coast, where they belong), as well as Masa Anzai (Bison, Foster Kare) and Conor McClosky. Standout tracks: “I Don’t Always Know What You’re Saying,” “S.T.H.D.,” “(I’ll Be Your) Ashtray,” and “Night You’re Beautiful.” Not that the rest of the album isn’t worth shaking a sweaty shag of clotted hair to, at full blast on a stolen bestickered ghetto blaster in someone’s basement party near Hastings and Princess. Posted: Apr 1, 2008