Ducks Ltd. begin their spring/summer 2024 tour this weekend, and to celebrate they’ve shared a new single. “When You’re Outside” features backing vocals from Ratboys‘ Julia Steiner and Moontype‘s Margaret McCarthy and was recorded during the same sessions as this year’s fantastic “Harm’s Way” album .
On “Harm’s Way”, the songs are better, the production shimmers more brightly, and the arrangements are more ambitious (piano, strings), with assists from Ratboys‘ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, Dehd‘s Jason Bala, Finom’s Macie Stewart and more. Most notably, they’ve added real drums to augment their arsenal of drum machines and that adds real punch to these breathless, pop nuggets, and ups their replayability. Effortlessly tuneful songs like “Hollowed Out,” “The Main Thing” and “Deleted Scenes” (there’s not a bum track here) may invite comparisons to The Go-Betweens, The Wedding Present, The Verlaines, and others, but they also hold their own against them.
McGreevy says it was their time on the road with Nation of Language, Archers of Loaf and Illuminati Hotties that made the biggest difference between this and their debut. “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. 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?”
“When You’re Outside” is out now on Carpark / Royal Mountain Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 