Ladyhawk awakens in a trash-filled, “morning after” apartment in East Vancouver, British Columbia. Duffy, Darcy, Sean, and Ryan arise, pick up their instruments and head out into the heathen city, singing songs about life and love. They are rockers and dreamers — still trapped in their apple country teenage minds, looking for girls and kicks, and mining their teenage quarries from the inside-out. Growing up together as the best of friends, Ladyhawk have stories that radiate with the presence of all four members. Their self-titled debut on Jagjaguwar is a stomping and sweaty ride through the Vancouver streets that they all know well, as viewed from the seats of a bruised and doorless Astro Van. In this ride, you can’t help but feel that you will fall out and you will fall down, and your joints will all be sore at the end of the trip.
Ladyhawk’s core is bracing rock. Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night is the hailstorm on the hood of The Replacements Let It Be, while distorted guitars invoke the thread and swerve of Silkworm and Dinosaur Jr. Helped along the way by Amber Webber (vocals) and Josh Wells (percussion, organ, singing) of Black Mountain, it will be hard to find a more hauntingly beautiful set of rock music than this debut. It was recorded and mixed, with the help of Black Mountaineers Wells and Matthew Camirand, in the “Karachi Vice” clubhouse, in the back of a furniture factory, amongst chicken and fish processing plants. With some of the more “inexpensive” ladies of the night scattered about, it captures the bottlenecked frenzy of their much-loved live show. There, each night, these grown-up kids at heart fall over, get right back up, cry on shoulders and fold the day in halves, watching the sun come up over the dashboard. |
