Thanks to petenema and flickr for the photo.
Ladyhawk is an anachronism: a band that has existed for only 4 short years that plays loose, catchy, rock and roll that would seem more at home filed next to Powderfinger-era Neil Young or A Catholic Education-era Teenage Fanclub than the scads of neo-post-everything bands that represent their contemporaries. Not to say that they are stuck in the past, it’s just that they don’t seem interested so much in trying to capture a sound as they are in building songs around melodies and hooks using the barest of rock and roll elements: choruses, verses, bridges and solos.
Definite road dogs (this is the second show that Ladyhawk have played at Call the Office within a 6 month period) their comfort on stage is obvious, and they eased into a set that captured both the bluesy work-outs and catchy pop songs that make up the sound of their latest album Shots. Singer/guitarist/primary songwriter Duffy Driediger was really the focal point of the evening as he sang in his heart-broken yelp of a voice, conjuring Husker Du’s Grant Hart, and making cryptic comments at the appreciatively vocal crowd. Not that this is strictly his show: Ladyhawk are an obvious capital-B band; each member works off of each other and when they start to get down and stretch out on songs like Fear and The Dugout the hours spent playing in booze-holes like Call the Office become obvious. When they finished their 45-minute set, I was left with a feeling of poignancy: Ladyhawk seems destined to languish in obscurity, playing in front of 30 people in college towns simply because the earnest rock and roll that they purvey is no longer fashionable. If you ever want to see what a band looks like that makes music simply for ‘the love,’ I suggest you catch Ladyhawk before they get washed away with the tide.
Ottawa’s Metz opened the show with what might quite possibly have been the loudest set in recent memory. The three-piece practices the same techincal, bass-heavy, power-through-volume ethic popularized by the early-90s Touch and Go Records crowd. Echoes of Don Caballero, The Jesus Lizard and Lightning Bolt abounded as the young band members alternately jump, shook, posed and looked bored. Check them out on myspace here.
