Tom McGreevy interview: Ducks Ltd. singer/guitarist on new 'Harm's Way' album, jangle pop, nostalgia

Ducks Ltd., a jangle pop duo out of Toronto, recently released its second album, “Harm’s Way,” with the nine songs clocking in around a concise 27 minutes.

The way Tom McGreevy sees it, keeping Ducks Ltd.’s songs to around three minutes puts the band in “good company” in a broad sweep of pop music history.

“I think that’s just the way that we have always operated,” McGreevy said Monday in a phone call from Toronto. “I think our mentality is always assuming that everyone’s attention span is as limited as our own.”

Ducks Ltd. — McGreevy sings and plays rhythm guitar, while Evan Lewis handles lead guitar — will play Pittsburgh for the first time on March 27, with a show at Mr. Smalls Funhouse in Millvale.

Their headline show in Pittsburgh comes on the heels of their well-reviewed new album, which dropped in February. With catchy melodies and big hooks, McGreevy said “Harm’s Way” isn’t a huge change from 2021’s “Modern Fiction;” rather, it’s a more refined version of the band.

“We learned over the course of touring the previous record a bit about what our sound is and how it works.” he said. “Through the process of just living in it, while we were touring these songs and playing them a whole lot, we got a clearer understanding of how our stuff works, when it works. And I think we took that to making the new record.”

“Modern Fiction” may have been more insular, according to McGreevy, as it was written during the covid-19 pandemic and recorded in the basement of a Toronto warehouse. So “Harm’s Way” is “a bit looking outward, a lot more about other people,” he said, as it was largely written while touring and out in the world.

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The new album, recorded in Chicago, features plenty of guest musicians, including touring drummer Jonathan Pappo and members of Chicago bands like Ratboys, Dummy, Finom and Dehd.

“Evan and I have a very tight relationship in terms of how we work on music together. We try and take ego out of it entirely and we trust each other to do that,” he said. “So it becomes a thing where we’re really just working in service and trying to make the thing better. … So then we can bring in other people to it and know that there’s things that they can maybe add, but ultimately, we know what the things are supposed to be.”

While the music sounds upbeat, the lyrics showcase an anxiety under the surface. In “Train Full of Gasoline,” McGreevy sings “Bonded by an emptiness, shared sense of dull dead endedness, our hands will find a knife to twist again.” He highlighted that song as “one where all the pieces fit together really nicely” and representative of the album’s overall theme.

“It’s about watching (and) dealing with the hostilities of the world that’s constructed,” McGreevy said of the album, “and watching people you care about navigate that and then trying to survive as best you can through that reality.”

Some reviews have likened the band’s sound to 1980s jangle pop, with nods to early R.E.M., Echo & the Bunnymen, The Feelies and more.

“That’s an interesting thing about jangle pop as a medium, too, is that it was nostalgic the first time,” he said. “So when you go back and make this music that in the ’80s was looking back, it kind of is this compounding thing. It’s an interesting part of it, to be working in a medium where that thing is the core and then also, at the same time, trying to be aware of the pitfalls of that, that sort of backwards looking, you know?”

While the sound may be reminiscent of the 1980s and inspiring nostalgia, McGreevy is aiming for a more timeless approach.

“That’s kind of a hope. I think it goes back to the thing I was talking about, about the simplicity and directness,” he said. “That tradition of writing songs with these kinds of structures and these kind of lengths is something that obviously was taken up by country music and a bunch of other elements of (the) mid-century pop music movement. But it also goes back further. It’s like folk songs, the way that these things are structured. I think the idea that there are certain elements of the ways that a song is written that are kind out of time is something that we’re definitely aware of.”