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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

March 27, 2008


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2008-03-27

Music from the Sunshine Coast

Vancouver's Ladyhawk returned home to Kelowna to capture the sound of its new album

Jen Zoratti

In February 2006, Ladyhawk packed up its gear and holed up in an abandoned house in a field behind a strip mall in Kelowna, B.C., the band's childhood hometown. Two weeks later, the Vancouver-based quartet emerged with the album Shots - and, probably, a wicked hangover.

As romantically indie rock as Ladyhawk's rustic recording digs sound, the album's bucolic setting almost wasn't meant to be. Duffy Driediger, Darcy Hancock, Sean Hawryluk and Ryan Peters originally had their sights set on recording their second album in a studio.

"We were going to do it at The Hive in Vancouver but it was booked for the time we wanted," Driediger says, in the same lazy drawl he sings with. "We couldn't find anywhere else that looked good, so we decided to do it (at the house). It ended up being the main ingredient in how the record sounds - I think it's pretty cool."

It's a good thing the studio was booked. The house - which had no plumbing, no heat and had to have electricity brought in via extension cord from a neighbouring building - became something of a fifth member, contributing to Shots' atmospheric, live-off-the-floor feel.

But the band's return to Kelowna (and, collectively, its parents' houses) also deeply influenced the feel of record - particularly for Driediger.

"We're all from Kelowna, but I grew up in Vancouver. My family moved to Kelowna when I was 10 or so, so I think I've always associated Kelowna with my adolescence," says Driediger, now 29. "When I was 18, I got the fuck out of there.

"Being there took me back to those days when I would sit in my bedroom and play my guitar and figure out how to write songs," he continues. "It was a weird state to make music in."

It's apparent that Driediger tapped into his teenage years when it came to writing the songs on the album. Shots sounds like adolescence. Full of dark, emotive, alcohol-soaked rockers about the need to escape, emotional confusion and girls - backed by a chorus of cranked amps and guitar-pedal fuzz - it's a record that's both earnest and jaded, playful and serious, childlike and adult.

Shots recalls the clever slacker-rock of '90s alt greats such as Dinosaur Jr., Pavement and, going back a little further, even Hüsker Dü - bands eternally associated with a certain teenage experience (see: outcasts, apathetic stoners, basement musicians, serial partiers).

As rooted in the past as the record ostensibly is, Shots also sees Ladyhawk pushing its sound forward, building on the template it set for itself with its self-titled debut. That 2006 outing was intended to emulate Ladyhawk's live show - it was self-recorded, sans headphones - but the band has said that it "doesn't really sound like them." Shots, however, comes much closer to what the band had in mind.

Still, Driediger wasn't sold on the new album at first.

"It was weird, but when we finished the record, I was really self-conscious about it," he says. "Some things I was uncomfortable with because, personally, I took some chances. Now, I think it sounds great. I'm really stoked about it."

Being comfortable enough to take risks on this particular album is a feat for Ladyhawk, which had cameras pointed at it during the entire recording process. The making of Shots was filmed for a documentary on the band called Let Me Be Fictional, directed by Vancover-based filmmakers Mona Mok and Rob Leickner - a project Driediger was initially against.

"When they approached us, I was kind of the one who was like, 'I dunno, guys.' I just wanted to focus on the record," he says. "But, I got convinced it was a good thing.

"It was weird to have cameras in your face all the time - you tend to edit how you talk. And it's hard because you have no control over how you're portrayed, and normally, I like having lots of control when it comes to our art," Driediger continues. "But Rob and Mona are really cool, and I think their presence really added to it."

Shots ended up benefitting from the band's unexpected houseguests - but what does Driediger think of the finished doc?

"I saw a version of it, but I can't really imagine anyone other than people who are really into our band - which is probably, like, 10 people - being interested in it," he says, in typical self-deprecating fashion.

"But it really captures our raw sex appeal."

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