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!