Ducks Ltd.: How Lonely Are You?
Invigorating guitar-driven jangle-pop with an '80s vibe.
By Kerry Doole
Ducks Ltd. - "How Lonely Are You?" ( Royal Mountain Records / Carpark Records): The Toronto duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis has announced the release of its debut full-length album, Modern Fiction, on Oct. 1. A buzz has already been growing around the pair, with earlier EP Get Bleak and recent single 18 Cigarettes earning raves from the likes of Stereogum and Paste.
New single/video How Lonely Are You? will further fuel that. The Ducks Ltd. sound has been dubbed "jangle pop," and that's a fairly accurate description of the band's melodic guitar-driven sound. The rush of guitars here is quite invigorating. The presence of popular Kiwis (and labelmates) The Beths on harmonies is appropriate, for the track conjures memories of the seminal New Zealand Flying Nun bands of the '80s.
McGreevy describes the song this way in a press release: "It is about personal connection in an environment that is hostile to it, and about friendships with people who are physically distant. Me and Evan have both moved around a lot, and have friends in far-off places we don’t see as often as we’d like. In fact, we partly made this record while Evan was living in Australia and I was in Toronto. Some of those friendships are extremely important to me, and the song is kind of about grasping for those lifelines when it’s particularly difficult to believe that things are going to work out, or if there’s even any point in trying.”
The video, directed by John Smith, features shots of Tom on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls border, and Evan on the American side. "Me and Evan had not been in the same country for about 5 months when this video was shot,” says McGreevy. “He'd been in Australia and I was stuck in Canada owing to the Covid border rules. Those rules made it complicated for him to return to Canada for a minute, so he was in the US and Niagara Falls was the closest we could get to each other."
After shows in Toronto (The Garrison, Oct. 1) and Brooklyn (The Broadway, Oct. 10), the group head across the pond for seven UK shows next Feb. The album's arrival is keenly awaited.
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PR: Tom Churchill, Hive Mind PR
