Recommended Album: Ducks Ltd. – ‘Harm’s Way’

Nobody warned you that a dousing of spangled indie-pop could ever go as hard as Duck Ltd. go once they’re up and running. There was the potential of this heard on the Toronto duo’s 2021 debut breakthrough, Modern Fiction, with their abilities to seek out a hook and deliver it through motion capture in a blur, and that becomes all the more clear on its follow-up, Harm’s Way. A refinement of its predecessor to a certain extent, their sound embellishes a life luster while combatting doom and gloom with help from a surrounding community joining Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis in the studio. Touring drummer Jonathan Pappo and bassist Julia Wittman’s prescence is scattered about alongside Ratboys’ Julia Steiner lending her voice with Marcus Nuccio offering up his drum kitwork. Dehd’s Jason Balla — with his own subverted pop perfectionism — arranged backing vocals in the company of Dummy’s Nathan O’Dell, Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, Lawn’s Rui De Magalhaes, and Patio’s Lindsey-Paige McCloy. The collective effort matches the listens’ lyrical aesthetic of head-on collisions with the an off-rail daily struggle and plotting out escape routes from it, reinforcing the notion how it can take a village to see your way through. Still, McGreevy and Lewis have brightened the corners of our bleaker surroundings by outrunning them with their locked-in formula of jangly guitars played at punk speed and melodies that never overstay their welcome for good reason: They’re mastering the art of getting in and out of this life unscathed as fast as they can.

Highlights: “Train Full of Gasoline”, “Deleted Scenes”, “On Our Wave to the Rave”

Ducks Ltd.’s Harm’s Way is available now on Carpark Records.

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