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LADYHAWK Based on the album title and a sleeve photo of four shirtless twentysomethings spewing beer, you could easily conclude that Ladyhawk is just the band to provide the soundtrack to your next kegger. Boy, would you be wrong. With songs such as “Faces Of Death” and “Ghost Blues,” Ladyhawk won’t be playing a beer bust unless it’s held at midnight in a moonlit cemetery. Belying the band members’ young age, this Vancouver quartet pieces together some of the most harrowing portraits of loneliness, desperation and death you’ll hear this side of Nick Cave. If Kurt Cobain’s wrenching vocals at the end of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” sent chills up your spine, you’ll appreciate the existential horror of “Corpse Paint,” hearing singer/guitarist Duffy Driediger shrieking “There must be somebody out there” into the cold, dark night. Lyrical content aside, these guys are no goths. In fact, take recent Pearl Jam material, imbue it with a live-sounding recording aesthetic and vaguely Southern overtones and you start to get the picture. For the initiated, if you were put off by last year’s half-assed Fight For Anarchy EP, you’ll find Shots a return to the ragged, rock ’n’ roll brilliance of Ladyhawk’s 2006 self-titled debut. [Jagjaguwar, www.jagjaguwar.com] —Matt Ryan
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