Ducks Ltd. kept their winning formula with their sophomore album Harm's Way, which came out earlier this year through Royal Mountain Records — but that isn't to say that they didn't experiment with their sound a bit before editing the record down to its tight nine tracks.
Today we get a peek into that experimentation with one-off single "When You're Outside," which sees vocalist Tom McGreevy singing an atypically undulating chorus, and backed by harmonies from Julia Steiner of Ratboys and Margaret McCarthy of Moontype.
He explained:
This was one we wrote pretty early in the process for Harm's Way, which was a period when a lot of country-leaning ideas were working their way into our arrangements. I'd demoed the harmonies in the chorus (badly), and when we were working on backing vocals with Julia and Margaret they immediately understood what we were trying to do and really elevated it. The song didn't end up quite fitting in the sequence for the album, but it does a couple things we've never done before in a Ducks song so I'm glad we're finding a way to put it out. It's about trying to support someone who is making that difficult to do. Unconditional love in a sense. Or at least love with limited conditions.
Check out "When You're Outside" below, and revisit Exclaim!'s review of Harm's Way here.
