Ducks Ltd.

“[Ducks Ltd.] understand that dancing through misery is healthier than dancing around it.” - PITCHFORK 

 “A dreamy soundtrack to innocent teen turmoil” - NME 
 
“subtly, incredibly catchy” – STEREOGUM 

“A perfect combination of contemporary modern indie rock à la Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and classic jangle pop bands like Belle & Sebastian or The Sundays” – PASTE MAGAZINE 

“Like the Chills mixed with the Feelies mixed with the Wedding Present mixed with the Bats...” - Rolling Stone 
 

Ducks Ltd. today shared their rollicking new single “Train Full of Gasoline”—the third from their forthcoming new album Harm’s Way—alongside a boy wonder-directed video.  

“The jumping off point for this song was a friend telling me about the Lac Megantic rail disaster in Quebec. A 73 car train full of crude oil was left unattended and rolled down a hill before derailing and exploding in a town. I read about it a bunch, and to my understanding it was a scenario where a bunch of small errors built up and compounded each other, with the result being a catastrophe out of proportion with any of the individual failures that precipitated it,” explains singer/lyricist Tom McGreevy of the track, which features backing vocals from Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, as well as Ratboys’ Marcus Nuccio on drums. “The song is about self destructive patterns. How if you try to ignore or minimize issues in your life they can manifest in places you don't expect.”  

“Train Full of Gasoline” follows additional album tracks “Hollowed Out” and “The Main Thing,” which saw praise from Clash, The Line Of Best Fit, Billboard, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence, Paste, Stereogum, and Rolling Stone, among many others. Harm’s Way will be released on February 9th, 2024, via Carpark Records and is available for pre-order. 

Ducks Ltd. make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming. While the band’s songs are ostensibly breezy, a palpable anxiety boils underneath that communicates something deeper about everyday existence. On Harm’s Way, the Toronto duo of McGreevy and guitarist Evan Lewis hones in on interpersonal and societal collapses, urban decay, and the near-impossibility of keeping a level head when everything around you seems to be falling apart. “They’re songs about struggling,” says McGreevy (who also plays bass and rhythm guitar). “About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it's ready to collapse.”  

Even with its often dark subject matter, Harm’s Way is Ducks Ltd.’s most vividly rendered and collaborative collection yet. It’s an undeniable evolution for the band, not just in how these songs soar, but in their entire writing and recording processes. Composed on tour while supporting acts like Nation of Language, Illuminati Hotties, and Archers of Loaf, the album displays the band’s finely tuned songcraft and well-earned, road-tested confidence. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever. After last year, it’s in the hundreds. That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting,” says McGreevy. “In the past when we got stuck on a song we had a tendency to look at our favorite records to see how they tackled it. But now, instead of asking ‘what would Orange Juice do?’, we’d ask, ‘what would we do?’ 

The band, fortified by this strong sense of sonic identity and a self-assurance in their new material—and in contrast to Modern Fiction and their 2019 EP Get Bleak, both self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement—wanted to bring Harm’s Way to life in a new city, with an outside producer, and with some of their favourite musicians. “We realized that so many of our favorite bands who are making guitar music right now are from Chicago,” says McGreevy.  

Working with producer Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala), they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Finom’s Macie Stewart (violin, string arrangements); Nuccio (drums on most tracks); Dehd’s Jason Balla (who helped arrange the backing vocals, to which he also contributed); and backing vocals from Steiner, Nathan O’Dell (Dummy), McCarthy, Rui De Magalhaes (Lawn), and Lindsey-Paige McCloy (Patio). The band’s touring drummer, Jonathan Pappo, and bassist Julia Wittman also appear on the LP. “Historically our process has been really tightly controlled and insular. On this record, we worked with people who we trusted with a pretty wide range of musical backgrounds and they had approaches and ideas that helped open up the record's sonic palette,” explains McGreevy.  

Harm’s Way is Duck Ltd.’s most intuitive and organic album yet, the result of keen observation, self-possessed songwriting, and a collaborative spirit. Building on the successes of their previous releases, the deeply relatable album displays a band operating at a nuanced, lyrical and musical best. 

Ducks Ltd. will celebrate the release of Harm’s Way with a hometown record release show at Sonic Boom on February 8th, with Only God Forgives and Cootie Catcher supporting. They’re also confirmed to perform at Montreal’s Taverne Tour Festival on February 10th and the New Colossus and Treefort Music Festivals in March, before heading overseas to play the Moth Club in London, England, on May 27th, 2024. Stay tuned for additional tour dates.