#ducks ltd

This is Tom McGreevey and Evan Lewis’ second full-length as Ducks Ltd. and a big bright brash step up from 2021’s Modern Fiction. Our own Andrew Forell observed that “Although you’ll hear the influences — primarily English and Antipodean — Ducks Ltd. manage to force their own niche in a lineage of Flying Nun, Fortuna Pop!, Postcard, Sarah and Slumberland,” and that still holds. However, Harm’s Way is sharper and more exhilarating than its predecessor; it’s the same aesthetic but more clearly, exuberantly realized.

Ducks Ltd have honed their sound in a relentless round of post-COVID touring. They wrote parts of Harm’s Way while on the road with Archers of Loaf, and perhaps you can hear the up- and downsize of itinerant life in the title track. It crackles with the jangling excitement of playing to live audiences—the best hour of any day for a budding rock band—but also vibrates with a sadder, lonelier vibe. You can hear euphoria in the careening instrumental parts but doubt and listless dissatisfaction in the verse. McGreevey sings the chorus in a glorious swirl of uplift, but the words are about danger, vulnerability and stunted opportunity. The best pop songs have always been happy and sad simultaneously, and this set has that lovely rainy-sunshine ambiguity.

Ducks Ltd. make a music that was once the voice of youth and now primarily appeals to aging record collectors. But even though power pop jangle has become a niche category, there’s no denying its giddy pleasures. If you like tuneful rock with a little bit of nervous edge, here’s a good one.

McGreevy specializes in vignettes that locate personal malaise within a wider context. He gives voice to young adulthood’s restlessness and despondency, seeking comfort and absolution in nostalgia for a past that can’t quite be escaped. The splendidly titled “Sullen Leering Hope” makes explicit the connection between individual apathy and national decline clocking “Old frustrations/Filthy habits/Cloister lifestyles/Outlook’s tragic” and “Prideful, sneering/Wounded nation/Princelings risen/’Bove their stations” over a rollicking rhythm augmented by strings. The refrain’s admonition to action feels like a plea to a troubled but dear friend rather than self-help bromide. That sincerity of intention carries through Modern Fiction as McGreevy plangent voice skirts pathos. He and Lewis maintain a steady pace, their guitars gamboling joyful around the songs’ sad sack protagonists. For all the moping, chain smoking, loneliness, self-recrimination and useless posturing. The muscularity of the bass and drums supports a deft lightness in the guitar work which paradoxically lifts the songs. They are pointed but rarely reproachful. “Fit To Burst” comes close but the mordant wit, pulsating bass and ascending guitar lines are as sticky as summer-soaked band shirts. Half way through, McGreevy temporarily runs out of words and Aaron Goldstein’s pedal steel provides the plaintive counterpoint to Go-Betweens influenced guitars in the instrumental interlude “Patience Wearing Thin”.  

2021 has been a pretty good year for indie guitar bands so far, and Modern Fiction will not disappoint fans of the labels mentioned above. Yes, you’ll hear echoes of influence but McGreevy and Lewis have forged their own path based on really good songwriting and musical chops.