Ducks Ltd. are Tom Mcgreevy (vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards and bass) and Evan Lewis (lead guitar, bass and beats), a duo currently based between Canada (Toronto) and Australia (Geelong) who have made a name for themselves for their devotion to the jangle-pop genre. According to the band’s Spotify introduction text, the key to the Ducks Ltd. sound is “simple charms, just like in the music that inspired it,” and they cite several 1980s indie pop bands in this regard, such as Felt, Orange Juice, Close Lobsters, McCarthy, The Go-Betweens, and projects associated with the independent record label Flying Nun Records. However, the genealogy of jangle-pop (although the term was not used in the press at the time) goes back to the 1960s, and the Byrds’ version of Bob’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan, a song that contains the expression “in the jingle-jangle morning,” is perhaps the one that best encapsulates the whole aesthetic in question: the bright reprise of open chords on electric guitars, the gliding melodies over larger harmonies, and, perhaps most importantly but also most incommunicably, an ambiguous, nostalgic feeling that is simultaneously jubilant and melancholy (listen to the Ducks Ltd. single “18 cigarettes”). The thing took shape after McGreevy and Lewis met on tour while playing in different Toronto bands, and found a mutual desire to develop work in this sub-category of rock. Now, having released their EP Get Bleak in 2019 by Bobo Integral – then re-issued in 2021 by Carpark -, having played with the likes of The Goon Sax, Weyes Blood and Juan Water, and having reached the critics of Pitchfork, A.V.Club and NME, Ducks Ltd. arrive at ZDB in quartet form, one of the stops on their extensive 2022 tour of Europe and North America. AR

The last time the Portuguese band Hause Plants played at ZDB was in March 2021, at a time when no one could hear of bedroom pop (irra, confinement!), but when everyone was necessarily close to it. In fact, despite their creative process starting from a more or less solitary home setting around guitarist and singer Guilherme Correia, and despite this output coming close to the “ethereal” qualities of dream pop and shoegaze, the band says that “the songs of Hause Plants […] exist to be heard and played live”, pointing, on the other hand, to the energetic performances of post-punk bands from the 80’s. On their return to Aquário, in the context of a Portuguese tour, we find that Hause Plants, which also includes João Simões (electric guitar, keyboards, and second vocals), Dani Oliveira Royo (electric guitar), and António Nunes da Silva (drums), have not only left the room, but have left the country! They moved to Brooklyn, New York, played a few gigs there and released a new EP by the Californian Spirit Goth Records, entitled Sleeping With Weird People and where you can notice an aesthetic change with the introduction of synthesizers that encourage dance. AR