"Meet me outside the skating rink/ Your mom is a bitch/ I don't care what she thinks/ Of me." When Ladyhawk frontman Duffy Driediger barreled into "Teenage Love Song"-- the most endearing 150 seconds on the band's self-titled 2006 debut-- with those words, you could have sworn Southern rock had a new poet laureate, still wet behind the ears and punch-drunk with enthusiasm. The best part of that idea, though, was knowing that Ladyhawk was from Vancouver, British Columbia, a Canadian port city with one of the highest costs of living in the world. The most essential music from the southeastern portion of the United States has long been united by the same sense of exposed nerves and uncloaked emotions, as integral to the songs as the sounds themselves. Neither Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sam Cooke, nor Superchunk hedged bets for subtlety's sake or pursued passivity for passion. On both their sweeping debut and the vinyl-only, six-track follow-up Fight for Anarchy, Ladyhawk (like their Canadian predecessors the Band and Neil Young) haven't either.
But Fight for Anarchy offers a different approach toward their same humid feelings. While nine of the 10 tracks on Ladyhawk were straightforward, electric-guitar marches, five of the six tracks here are rooted in piano or acoustic guitar. That's not to say Fight is more docile: In fact, Fight for Anarchy is the most musically aggressive batch of Ladyhawk songs yet, in terms of both musicianship and production. "Boy You Got Another Thing Coming" is a downtrodden, bitter fuck-you to the girl that left guitarist Darcy Hancock lonesome, high, and dry. He's backed by wailing cello, ramshackle acoustic guitars, and commiserating harmonies until two minutes in, when he funnels his emotional damage through a minute-long, razor-thin knife of feedback posing as a solo. He's out to damage his heartbreaker's hearing, and, when the track limps to the finish line, his punishment is the only thing left standing. Closer "You Ran" sounds like a Carey Mercer nod, the heavy strum of a barely tuned acoustic guitar and Driediger's shouting-down-the-hallway vocals nearly overloading the microphone. The band bleeds at track's end into a great sonic mess, unintelligible moans, smeared guitars and a sole clattering drum bashing against each other. Ladyhawk are still singing about loving women, bearing busted hearts, and running wild, but they didn't take these chances before.
The risks work only in clips, though. Fight for Anarchy was recorded in one session between tours, and imperfections remain exposed all over the place, with aberrant beats, notes and tones popping from every song's surface. While the same could be said of Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, those flaws were bolstered by a devastating emotional gravity (a member of Crazy Horse and a roadie had just died of heroin) and some of the best songs Young has written. Here, Ladyhawk just sounds alternately mad, sad, and stoned, and most of Fight for Anarchy runs only like a sketchbook for what could have been. "Boy" and the 45-second acoustic interlude "Amber Jam" are endearing enough; however, opening quick takes on "War" and "If You Run" seem like wasted statements warranting a little more preparation.
But what Fight for Anarchy lacks in absolute worth it makes up for in potential: Sonically, lyrically, and structurally, Ladyhawk are restless here, proclaiming that they've got more to offer than the ragged, social-renegade rock they wore so well on last year's debut, even if they're still sorting through the kinks of making outsider interests coalesce around Driediger's beer-breath anthems (they are). Interestingly, the two Canadian acts whose raucous Southern nature is reflected in Ladyhawk's raw-nerve tendencies-- the Band and Young-- had the same problem: Robbie Robertson has long said that he felt the need to shelter the Band from his interest in 20th century composition, and Young hit the biggest brick walls of his career when his experimental reach far exceeded his grasp. But Ladyhawk are of a different time and place, when dissonance and abstraction aren't mere avant artifacts or obtuse anathema. Somewhere between Frog Eyes' saturated northern sprees and My Morning Jacket's distended southern rails, Ladyhawk will eventually find their place: Fight for Anarchy doesn't quite put them there, and that's OK. They've proven they have the interest and energy, if you'll just give them time.
