Spitfires

With the likes of the Black Halos, the Hellacopters, the Murder City Devils and Tricky Woo, the Spitfires are blazing a trail back into rock'n'roll hearts everywhere. The long awaited sophomore release from Vancouver's bad boys of rock 'n' roll has finally come to see the light of day. Departing from a lo-fi, heavily Rolling Stones and New Bomb Turks influenced debut CD to a more defined, hi-fi, muscle-car brand of rock 'n' roll has definitely opened up yet another essential chapter in the history of the Spitfires. The trumpet and piano accompaniment on "Downtown Tonight" are brilliant and help to produce a definitive Hastings Street fighting anthem. Although some of the lyrics are cheesy as hell, perhaps it's all tongue in cheek? As for their Junk Records EP, with an extremely sexy and fetish-oriented photograph of Emma Peel on the cover, the context of Slick Black Cat becomes apparent. In addition to the two on Junk Records, you can add a self-titled EP just released on Estrus; leave it to the Spitfires to release so many hit-and-runs all at once.