{grate 3} One look at Ladyhawk’s group photo on the back cover of
Shots and the curious consumer can make a somewhat educated guess as to what
the contents of the album are going to sound like: sloppy beer-breath anthems
for shaking your arms now and crashing to the floor later, sung by men with
aversions to razors. Not a bad guess, actually, but not all true.
Yes, you can almost smell the Jack Daniel’s as singer Duffy
Driediger desperately bellows out the chorus to the opening track, “I Don’t
Always Know What You’re Saying,” but to call the saturated feedback whines of
barely-tuned guitars and garbled verse-hollers sloppy is erroneous. The
roughness gives Shots a charm not possible if the
foursome were sober and drumming to a studio metronome. It gives the record a
certain panache that makes the group all the more comparable to fellow
Vancouverites Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and adds to Ladyhawk’s Southern
raucous rock.
Driediger and company are punch-drunk through the whole
duration of Shots. The nine tracks
embody every type of boozehound,
alternately sounding like an angry drunk, a depressed drunk and that
drunk you met the other night who gave you relationship advice while anxiously
waiting for the crossing light to change.
Shots closes with “Ghost Blues,” a slow 10-and-a-half-minute
burn, climaxing at six minutes with a primal group scream, and finally ending
in quiet acoustic arpeggios.
The album was recorded in a gutted farmhouse in
that’s exactly what it sounds like. Never mind musical technique, Ladyhawk
makes you want to shout down the hallways, with arms around a chum’s shoulder,
finally collapsing on the couch after a strange, introspective, 39-minute
ethanol-fueled trip.
