Following the announcement of their self-titled debut album out June 23rd, new Chicago trio Black Duck (Douglas McCombs, Bill MacKay, Charles Rumback) share elemental new single “Second Guess.” Tapping into freeform revelations akin to labelmates Jim White & Marisa Anderson, “Second Guess” expands traditional folk forms into hypnotic drift. McCombs and MacKay’s weightless guitar lines shift and expand with the grace of cloud formations, arcing zephyrs strafing the sky, while Rumback’s billowing percussion punctuating the track with the low rumble of thunder and rain on the horizon.
Black Duck is a gallery of sonic tapestries, unbound by any constraints while also utilizing genre touchstones. Challenging what a trio of two guitarists and a drummer can do, pieces move from breezy shuffles to stormy blues rumbles to gorgeous textural drones. Playing entirely improvised live sets for years helped develop the trio’s acute senses for one another, knowing precisely how to listen to the others and bolster whatever direction they move in. Playing to the moment and reading each other and the spaces they’re in formed a fluency between the trio which allows them to follow each other down winding paths and short tangents alike. Black Duck’s debut is a testament to that fluency, an expedition led by three veterans into alluring worlds bathed in myriad splendors.
After already being invited to play Big Ears Festival and alongside acts like Yo La Tengo, Black Duck will be playing select U.S. dates this summer, with more worldwide dates to be announce.
