Ducks Ltd. The Main Thing

About

Ducks Ltd. return with urgent, shimmering new single “The Main Thing” featuring backing vocals from Dehd’s Jason Balla. It’s available everywhere now, alongside a Colin Medley-directed video. Listen at the link in the bio.

The song is the band’s first new original music since their 2022 single, “Sheets Of Grey,” and their recent collaborative single cover series, which saw Ducks Ltd. working with Mo Troper, Ratboys, Illuminati Hotties, and Jane Inc. Of the Dave Vettraino (Deeper, Lala Lala, Alabaster DePlume, Dehd)-produced track, singer/lyricist Tom McGreevy explains, “‘The Main Thing’ is about growing apart from someone whose perspective you once shared. Being in lockstep with another person and then suddenly realizing you are no longer aligned. That you’re watching them throw themselves into the same losing battles over and over again, but also recognizing that all that losing might be the right thing to do.”

The Toronto duo of McGreevy and Evan Lewis has also announced a New York show at TV Eye in Ridgewood, Queens, on December 2nd, with The Ophelias supporting. They will also head overseas to London, England, this spring for a show at the Moth Club on May 27th, 2024. More dates will be announced soon.

Artist Bio

Ducks Ltd. are a Toronto band featuring Australian lead guitarist Evan Lewis and U.K-born, U.S.-raised singer, bassist, and rhythm guitarist Tom McGreevy. As Ducks Ltd., the two thrive on skirting the edges of buoyant jangle pop and driving power pop. Their latest album, Harm’s Way, contains anxious songs that McGreevy explains are “about struggling. About watching people I care for suffer, and trying to figure out how to be there for them. And about the strain of living in the world when it feels like it’s ready to collapse.”

Harm’s Way is an undeniable evolution of Ducks Ltd.’s songwriting process. Where their critically acclaimed 2021 debut Modern Fiction and 2019 EP Get Bleak were self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement, here, they made an LP in Chicago with producer Dave Vettraino and some of their favorite musicians. These collaborators include Finom’s Macie Stewart, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio, Dehd’s Jason Balla, Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, Lawn’s Rui De Magalhaes, Dummy’s Nathan O’Dell, and Patio’s Lindsey-Paige McCloy. Ducks Ltd.’s touring drummer Jonathan Pappo also appears on the LP. 

The band first showed this collaborative streak on a 2023 covers EP, which featured guests like Mo Troper, Ratboys, Illuminati Hotties, and Jane Inc. that boasted renditions of songs by The Cure, The Feelies, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Where those songs started as ideas on days off from tour, Harm’s Way is also a product of writing on the road while supporting acts like Nation of Language and Archers of Loaf. “When we got signed, we had played maybe five or six shows ever,” says McGreevy. “After last year, it’s well in the hundreds. Those things change your perception of your own music and songwriting.” 

This well-earned and road-tested confidence made the making of this LP their most intuitive and organic yet. “Our relationship is built on trust and we don’t let our egos come into the creative process in any way,” says Lewis. “We have this really great thing where every decision with the band is filtered through both of us. Here especially, we really figured out how to make something that truly sounds like us.”