Ducks LTD - 'Train Full of Gasoline'
Ducks Ltd. Share their third rollicking single, ‘Train Full of Gasoline’ for their new upcoming album ‘Harm’s Way’.
Ducks Ltd. Share their new single ‘Train Full of Gasoline’ for their most organic and intuitive album yet, ‘Harm’s Way’. Ducks Ltd. Make inviting and frenetic guitar pop for when life feels overwhelming and even though their songs may seem breezier, they communicate something different about everyday existence.
Talking about the new track singer and lyricist Tom Mcgreevy states that “The jumping off point for this song was a friend telling me about the Lac Megantic rail disaster in Quebec. A 73-car train full of crude oil was left unattended and rolled down a hill before derailing and exploding in a town. I read about it a bunch, and to my understanding it was a scenario where a bunch of small errors built up and compounded each other, with the result being a catastrophe out of proportion with any of the individual failures that precipitated it.” He continues that the single is about the self-destructive patterns and how if you ignore or minimize these issues in your life, they manifest in places that you would not expect.
Ducks Ltd. Drives these self-destructive patterns home, from lyrics of ‘Bonded by an emptiness Shared sense of dull dead endedness.’ bubbling up the anxiety which communicates something deeper about everyday existence. Till this anxiety tipples over and the self-destructive patterns manifest on other places, ‘It's always, another dagger hidden in the sleeve. Another bullet in the magazine.’ On the track, Evan Lewis homes in on the interpersonal and societal collapses and the near impossibility of keeping a level head when everything begins to fall apart, ‘A way to get yourself set. Up to roll back. Down that same long track. Set up to explode. Like a train full of gasoline.’ Bassists and rhythm guitarist McGeevy says that the track 'Train Full of Gasoline’ and on the upcoming album ‘Harm’s Way’, the songs are about struggling, and watching the people they care for suffer, while you try and figure out how to be there for them and how the strain of living in the world feels like it is ready to collapse, ‘But whatever the beginning is, the ending feels the same’.
Even with tracks often having a dark subject matter, ‘Harm’s Way’ is Ducks Ltd.’s most vividly rendered and collaborative collection yet. There is an undeniable evolution for the band, which is not just because of how these new tracks sound but from their entire writing and recording processes. Composing the songs on tour while supporting acts like Nation of Language, Illuminati Hotties, and Archers of Loaf, ‘Harm’s Way’ displays Ducks Ltd. Displays the band’s finely tuned songcraft and well-earned and road-tested confidence. McGreevy says that when Ducks Ltd. Got signed, they had played maybe five or six shows ever and after last year, it was in the hundreds. “That experience can change your perception of your own music and songwriting,”
Since this new experience, the upcoming release of ‘Harm’s Way’ contrasts their 2021 album ‘Modern Fiction’ and their 2019 EP ‘Get Bleak’ which were both self-recorded and self-produced in a Toronto basement as ‘Harm’s Wau’ has been brought to life in a new city with a new outside producer and some of Ducks Ltd’s favourite musicians. On the forthcoming album, Ducks Ltd. They enlisted a marquee cast of Windy City collaborators to round out the tracks including Finom’s violinist Macie Steward, drummer Nuccio and Dehd’s Jason Balla who helped arrange and contributed to the backing vocals and the bands touring drummer and bassist Jonathan Pappo and Julie Wittman also appear on this LP. On this record, we worked with people who we trusted with a wide range of musical backgrounds, and they had approaches and ideas that helped open up the record's sonic palette,” explains McGreevy
With their upcoming album on the way and many festivals from Sonic Boom, Montreal’s Taverne Tour Festival and the New Colossus and Treefort Music Festival, and they do not stop there before they head to London for a show, 2024 will be such a big year for Ducks Ltd with fans already begging for additional tour dates.
Words by Beth Simms
