Ducks Ltd. have announced their new full-length Harm’s Way will drop on February 9th, 2024, via Carpark Records. Ahead of the album’s arrival, the duo have shared lead single “Hollowed Out,” which features backing vocals from Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio (who also plays drums on the track), Dehd’s Jason Balla, and Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, as well as strings arranged and performed by Finom’s Macie Stewart. “There was a sinkhole that opened up on Dundas West a little while ago, in an area near to where I live. It shut down the road for a month. It had a strange resonance, partly because a lot of the streets in Toronto used to be rivers and streams running down to the lake that roads were then built over. It felt like an encroachment of nature into an urban environment–the river coming back to collapse a piece of civic infrastructure, and I built the song around the feeling that evoked,” explains singer/lyricist Tom McGreevy of the song, which can also be heard in a corresponding Colin Medley-directed video. “It’s about living with decline. About the feeling that the horizon of possibility in the world is forever being drawn in to align with the edges of the imaginations of a small group of careless rich people. And about existing through a state of ongoing catastrophe over which we have no control.” The follow-up to their 2021 debut, Modern Fiction.

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?’

For Harm’s Way,  worked with an outside producer, and with some of their favorite musicians. “We realized that so many of our favorite bands who are making guitar music right now are from Chicago,” says McGreevy. Working with Vettraino, they enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks on Harm’s Way, including: Stewart (violin, string arrangements); Nuccio (drums on most tracks); 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.

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.

Ducks Ltd.
Harm’s Way
track listing
Carpark Records

1. Hollowed Out
2. Cathedral City
3. The Main Thing
4. Train Full of Gasoline
5. Deleted Scenes
6. On Our Way To The Rave
7. A Girl, Running
8. Harm’s Way
9. Heavy Bag

Ducks Ltd. Tour Dates

12/2/23 – Queens, NY @ TV Eye*
02/08/24 – Toronto, ON @ Sonic Boom#
02/10/24 – Montreal, QC @ Taverne Tour Festival
05/27/24 – London, UK @ Moth Club

* The Ophelias and Golden Apples support
# Only God Forgives and Cootie Catcher support

Pre-order Harm’s Way by Ducks Ltd. HERE