Spun: Ladyhawk

By Amanda Hu

Ladyhawk, a quartet from interior B.C. with two solid albums under their belts, failed to impress with their third attempt at success with their newest release No Can Do. With its members’ homes spanning from Kelowna to Vancouver, the British Columbian band has previously recorded two wonderful albums, giving fans high expectations for No Can Do. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met.

The songs have a tendency to let the instrumentals outshine the vocals at many points, resulting in an album that is difficult to listen to and enjoy. While the guitar rifts and the rhythmic beats were well orchestrated, a little more emphasis on the vocals would have helped the album immensely. Even simply bringing them out from the background would have been sufficient to improve the struggling sound.

Having such wonderful songs from previous albums, one would expect something equal or greater from the tracks on No Can Do. Fortunately, the band managed to come up with at least one fantastic song. “You Read My Mind” is an homage to British punk pop/rock and is more akin to the style that Ladyhawk is known for — something the band should have honed in on.

Although this may sound like the ramblings of a stereotypical hipster, No Can Do has failed to rival anything from Ladyhawk’s previous albums. Perhaps it has something to do with the change in record label this time around, or perhaps it was just poor judgement. Maybe the focus on the instrumentals was intentionally done, and maybe some listeners will prefer the change. It isn’t that the album is irredeemably bad, it was just disappointing considering how wicked their previous album Shots was. Ladyhawk has the potential to rock the musical world, so please boys, do better next time.

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