Be a hero to crowd of empty bottles - Ladyhawk with no e

On his post-Day Today, pre-Jam, must-be-a-mistake Radio One weeknight show in the early nineties, Chris Morris played an (entirely fabricated) audio clip of Keith Richard falling over in a recording studio.  I always think of that when I listen to All Down The Line on Exile, that kinda audio-verite WHOOOO in the background as the second verse starts that prickles the hairs on my neck like all kinds of dead people stomping all up and down my grave.

There's a similar moment near the end of New Joker, the final song on the eponymous first Ladyhawk album, released in 2006 by Jagjaguwar.  It's a lovely, off-balance song that ends in a very different place to where it starts, and evokes both the regal decay of Imperial Rock Pomp as evinced by the Rolling Stones, and a hapless self-conscious indierock, doubtless unintentionally hilarious originally, but left on the record by a band judiciously aware of their place in the rock firmament and unafraid to leave the edges rough.

I love Ladyhawk unreservedly, both as a breathless acolyte of the premium rush of rock music ecstasy, and a jaded middle-aged armchair pundit who somehow feels that had their name been less shit they might have gained more traction in the larger world of indierock stardom.  But their name was shit, and was also used (plus a 'e') by an anodyne post-Dido shit-shower (i'm sure she's lovely) who got more immediate interest than the Kelowna haries ever did.  They were destined to be also-rans, something they seemed to understand, going by the photo on the rear of their second album Shots, in which all four shirtless pasty bandmembers spit beer all over each other.  Sexy it ain't.

Yet this unrepentantly unfashionable troupe recorded a three album run that culminated in No Can Do, perhaps the most perfect 28 minutes of indie rock recorded in the 21st century up to then, with a smattering of classics en route.

Duffy Driediger is a perfectly downtrodden rock'n'roll protagonist, and his songs have that vainglorious chuztpa that only comes from a songwriter who knows himself with painful clarity.  The songs of the first record take in all the golden heartache of adolescence, there's a woozy texture to much of the album, redolent of weed and a cheap beer buzz.  Duffy sings"tell me the truth of your heart, please tell me" on The Dugout and it breaks my heart everytime

.  Songs veer between stoned sagaciousness and needling yearning, like a hardon at midnight can segue to a hollow-eyed bout of world-weary pessimism by four AM.  Driediger's voice often has a slurred edge to it, like he just has to finish this pearl of wisdom before passing out on his face on the carpet. My Old Jacknife joins Bob Pollard's My Valuable Hunting Knife in the elite ranks of awesome catchy songs about knives.  The four AM stoned immaculate songs drag the pace a bit, but Teenage Love Song lifts the second half of the record triumphantly, after the glorious plod of Sad Eyes/Blue Eyes.   Drunk Eyes like many of these songs rides the crest of several needling solos and has so many killer lines I don't know where to start - "Well I truly think it's fine to not be noble all the time" "I don't care if I'm ever going nowhere, don't care if I ever come back" "Feed me lies and feed me booze I ain't got nothing much to lose". The album is bookended by two similar downtempo numbers, the first of which, 48 Hours, feels like an epic intro that teases a song, perhaps the last song, the aforementioned glass-breaking New Joker, which lurches back and forth between Crazy Horse chug and scorched-earth, feedback-drenched climax.

Shots (Jagjaguwar again) then feels like a band unfettered by first album nerves or a lack of ambition, bursting out of the traps with I Don't Always Know What You're Saying, a midtempo rocker with extra texture but an edge of equivocation in the lyric, bolstered by a late-coming lead that imparts a crucial questing spirit to the song. S.T.H.D boasts an entirely incomprehensible chorus that nags regardless.  Which makes Fear so startling, a perfectly built pop song clad in the shaggy dissonant raiment of Ladyhawk.

 Corpse Paint wears the trademark skeletal existential squint that characterise those 4AM reveries Ladyhawk are prone to, but they can always be relied upon to seesaw back to a mid-afternoon drunk stagger, (I'll be your)Ashtray, then back to spindly woodsy introspection, Faces of Death.

Shots ends with Ghost Blues, ten minutes of slow build that crescendos gloriously and points towards a fascinating voyage into loping long-form riffpoetry of the type Dave Heumann nailed with Arboretum.  But Ladyhawk don't go there again, instead finding perfection in brevity.

No Can Do, released by Triple Crown, opens with Footprints, like a drowsy beast blinking itself awake and slowly staggering to it's feet.  One of only three songs to bust the 3 minute mark, it's a majestic beast once it's up, and then I'm A Witch and No Can Do gradually escalate the tempo until one-two punch of Rub Me Wrong and Sinking Ship rage out the speakers, pop songs first punk- then power-, closing side A with a flourish.

Side B comes out swinging with You Read My Mind, stinging lead lines framing some gnarly self-analysis from Duffy ("soft around the middle ever since I was little, getting softer all the time getting high out of my mind"), followed by Bedbugs, a spry yet doleful hop-and-skip of a song, each verse framed by a droney, feedback laced guitar riff.

 Evil Eye starts with a declamatory riff before screaming off towards one of the catchiest most primeval choruses ever ("I don't want to I just have to I don't have no choice"), followed by the stomping mantra of Window Pane with it's repeated refrain "and the sound went on forever" before crashing to a close.  Eyes of Passion acts as a sort of coda, returning this beast of it's former repose, although Ladyhawk can't often resist ending a song with a splendid guitar solo and some howling noise, and in that respect this addictively brief record is vintage Ladyhawk.

I don't know what they're up to now.  No Can Do came out in 2012, they toured after a hiatus for their tenth anniversary in 2014 but I can't find them since.  Googling band members suggests Sean Hawryluk & Ryan Peters & Darcy Hancock still play music around British Columbia, but no sign of Duffy.  I hope they get back together as these records are so great it seems a shame to let it lie.  There's a real chemistry here and I'd love to hear more.

If shits are given, there's an extraordinarily unlikely documentary about the making of Shots on youtube. My favourite thing about it is that Ryan Peters looks just like Chef from Apocalypse Now.  Don't get off the boat!

Blitzen Trapper live in Bristol

BT have had a long strange trip from the scratchy backwoods lofi of their earliest records, through the breakneck junkshop clatter of early high Wild Mountain Nation, which mashed together searing riffs (title track, Miss Spiritual Tramp) and a stew of country, funk and weird synth-aided sideways pop gems, and then stone classic Furr which expanded on that sound and smoothed it slightly.  They followed that with a baroque folk-rock masterpiece Destroyer of the Void, and then zig-zagged again to the prog-tinged good-time bar-rock of American Goldwing, only to then drop what I can only describe as an Appalaichan funk record, VII.  All this led to the unlikely Springsteenian dirty-nailed pomp of their last couple of records, the most recent of which, Wild and Reckless, sprang from a theatrical show they staged in their hometown of Portland.  Lack of vision or ambition never a problem for these boys.

So it's telling for me when halfway through their set in the Fleece on a rainy Monday, Eric Earley forgets the words to the lead track of their current album.  Where was I, he asks after a quick gulp of water and a zoned-out apology.  Hell if I know, hard to say where BT are going to be from one song to the next, but that's always been part of their genius for me.  The big question going into this gig was which BT am I going to see tonight?

They open (early!) with Fire & Fast Bullets from Furr, which they deliver with controlled aggression, and then forge a jagged path between their more anthemic recent sound, and selected gems from much earlier work such as the iconic title track of Furr (crowned with terrific harmonies from Marty Marquis and Brian Koch) and Astronaut from American Goldwing, which is every inch the shimmering cosmic trip.

A big surprise is how some of what I had characterised as 'straighter' material unfolds new dimensions on stage - Thirsty Man from VII spirals into a crazy jam completely untethered from the recorded version, and the climactic raves-ups of All Across This Land and Wild and Reckless are transformingly uplifting in person.  On the way there Eric drops a string of gorgeous solo numbers, including The Man Who Would Speak True, the only song from Destroyer tonight, which shares a similar hallucinatory apocalyptic vibe with Black River Killer, also given an outing.

It's been ten years since BT played Bristol, and if I had to wait another decade I'd count it worth my while.

Howls from the Bay Area

In 2006 the legendary Comets on Fire issued their swansong Avatar, a supreme expression of the journey they had made from the breakneck punk speed noise of their self-titled debut on Alternative Tentacles, to the Julian Cope-endorsed (here!)grandeur of Blue Cathedral on Sub Pop.

At the same time, like a cosmic planetary alignment, Comets main dude Ethan Miller birthed the self-titled debut of a new venture, the pared-down three-piece Howlin Rain, on Birdman.  This mystical celestial event cast a scintillant ray from the heavens and straight into El Duderino's third eye, like BOOM, one doors closes and the universe opens. Where Comets had reached a kind of jazz epiphany where their frantic mantric clangor got doglocked with ecstatic expressions of a canonical rock excelsis, Howlin Rain offered an altogether more rootsy take on the same terrain - these apes were looking at the same mountain top, just out of the jungle rather than the slopes.

Halfway through Calling Lightning with a Scythe, Miller cuts loose from the rustic banjo stylings with a guitar solo so primal and overclocked that it threatens to untether from this plane entirely and spark another big bang for a new universe, and in an adjacent reality that is happening right now, praise be.  Frozen in a rictus of delirious joy as this Ur-solo unfolded, you knew that Ethan Miller had reached that mountaintop and just carried on climbing.

Each further Howlin Rain release seemed to compound this sense of manifest destiny, as Miller forever reconstituted his band of travellers on each record.  Magnificent Fiend, on Birdman and American, expanded the lineup to a five-piece, the record characterised by the churning Hammond of Joel Robinow.  The Russian Wilds swapped some personnel (including the addition of formidable guitar hero Isaiah Mitchell, of Earthless fame) but was a long strange trip due to the involvement of Rick Rubin, and seemed to almost burn our hero out.  After a live LP from the Russian Wilds tour, the relatively dolorous Mansion Songs was the last Howlin Rain release, and it's telling that the band for this album became the line-up of another Miller splinter group Heron Oblivion, in which he plays the bass for a change.

Moody though the record was, you wouldn't have known if from the ecstatic racket Miller and his touring band cooked up, and it's this touring line-up that have recorded the next chapter in the skybound arc of Howlin Rain, The Alligator Bride.  The lead single is redolent of Crazy Horse rock classicism and Miller's idiosyncratic lyrical pungency. 

Check out Miller's label website for the writings of the man himself and all things Howlin Rain.  This dude epitomises the spirit and excitement of grassroots, underground DIY music making, and from his eyrie in Oakland he's planning another headfirst lunge into the sun, so dip your feathers in hot wax and follow him upwards.

Hard times in Somerset

With the looming shadow of the cartoonishly evil Tory government cast across the national landscape like the shadow of Sauron, what better time to embrace the down and dirty scuzz-boogie of West Country trio Henry Blacker.  Nothing better to forget your woes than songs about cancer and insanity.

HB are three members of underground rock titans Hey Colossus who found time between their mothership's engagements to churn up a raucous festering mess of goodtime noise, the third and latest of which, The Making of Junior Bonner, is out now on Riot Season Records, and has actually streamlined the template honed through the preceding Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings and Summer Tombs. 

Previously their sound, as typified by the unhinged choogle of Crab House, a simple tale of being devoured by giant crabs, was akin to a cave-dwelling horror that might lure you into darkness and there rend your mind and body.  Since then Tim & Roo Farthing and Joe Thompson have traversed the savage seas where doomed sailors season the cabin boy (the deranged stomp of Landlubber) and the rocky road of existential horror (the elegiac title track of Summer Tombs) to arrive at the comparatively slick attack of Junior Bonner, the sonic equivalent of stranger with a wicked gleam in their eye beckoning you over with the promise of some cheap whizz only to disembowel you and run off with your wallet - at least you'll die with the sun on your face.

These are tight, brutal riffs chopped out across snarled tales of tough luck and tainted meat.  There are angular desert-rock leads but the pace is too fast to write them off as stoner rock.  Tim isn't averse to switching from laconic croon to death-metal gargle at a moment's notice, but it's never just metal, it's never just anything except awesome. 

They're touring now, so hit a gig if you can.  As I learned watching them play shows with Dead Meadow and Endless Boogie, they're a lean mean boogie machine on stage too.

http://riotseason.bigcartel.com/

https://henryblacker.wordpress.com/