What’s it like being one of a gazillion indie bands in an increasingly inhospitable music business? The Hails take that question and run with it on their second album, Duckpond (ONErpm), confronting everything from sky-high rents and go-nowhere jobs to social-media addiction and the scorge of online gambling. A product of the University Of Florida, the Hails burbled up from the Gainesville swamps in 2018, when their single “Younger,” landed on Spotify’s Fresh Finds playlist. With a mildly schizophrenic alt-leaning sound that draws on influences as diverse as the Cars and D’Angelo, the band has bolstered its less-tangible online strides through extensive touring and festival appearances.
The Hails’ 2023 debut, What’s Your Motive, was a product of the pandemic, assembled largely from demos passed back and forth. For Duckpond, the group rented a house in south Florida, where they allowed songs to develop organically over eight weeks before refining them with producer Brandon Shoop (Role Model, Junior Varsity).
“We made our rental feel and sound like the college house that birthed our first tunes,” says frontman Robbie Kingsley. “We always kept the tape running for spontaneous jams and fully collaborative writing.”
“It may seem like this album wants to shake its fist at the world,” says guitarist Dylan McCue. “But really, it wants to find beauty and levity in unlikely places—and remind us of the power of human connection in an increasingly large and distant world.”
Here’s more on each track from Kingsley.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Bad Habits”
“‘The bad habits are getting lost, about time that you paid the cost.’ It reads like a daily affirmation for our unit. But there’s still so much work left to be done. The music sits somewhere between ’80s new wave and 2000s indie. Brandon Shoop put us through a boot camp of sorts and made us sub out a lot of weird synths on the demo for ‘kick-ass’ guitars, as he likes to call them.”
2) “Fool”
“You walk into a leopard-print room with your best leather jacket, to be greeted by a waitress holding a martini. You think you’ve made it to heaven, but she ends up throwing the drink in your face just for the hell of it … But you kind of like it.”
3) “Story Of You And Me”
“A relationship as seen through a filmmaker’s lens—the sort of truth only found in comedy, playing the roles we’re cast in, how we react when stunts don’t go as planned. The song ends the way it starts, with the chorus shifting down in tempo to loop back to the beginning.”
4) “Digital Life”
“Loosely inspired by ‘Bug’ by Fontaines D.C., this is the song that kickstarted our summer jam sessions and gave us a glimpse into where they’d take us. I often tell people that seeing Fontaines D.C. live at the Brooklyn Paramount during their Romance tour was equal to a religious experience for me. On this track, I wanted to question how people can act certain ways online yet not carry that same energy into their real lives.”
5) “Pack It Up”
“This one feels like an ode to Julian Casablancas—so much so that I was scared we were blatantly ripping off something from the Strokes’ discography. My favorite line on the album comes from this song: ‘Think I’ll decide to open up, when the meat I chew gets tough.’”
6) “Corruptor”
“The lyrics were written in one fell swoop on the final day of recording after a tiff with my girlfriend, now fiancée. It’s about how I wasn’t giving her enough attention and affection. Reminiscent of ’90s Britpop, it’s the last song we picked to go on the record and was at risk of being cut due to time constraints and the lack of lyrics.”
7) “Vegas, Idaho”
“Every band has to have a song about life on the road, and this is ours. Dreaming of a normal life when you’re in the middle of a 10-hour drive through the vast desert regions of the western U.S. can make anyone go crazy, but it’s made us dream a bit bigger every time we do it.”
8) “Scampi”
“A pure Talking Heads-meets-David Bowie crossover. Wearing influences on your sleeve is one thing, but this is us tailoring a three-piece suit. Lots of laughs and goofy ideas during the recording process transformed this into a feel-good track. The lyrics are a sarcastic take on people’s passive political activism. ‘Take his pants and pull them down’ doesn’t belong in many songs—and it might not belong in this one. But we decided to give it a try.”
9) “Necessary”
“For a while, this one felt like the Beach Boys if they had proper fuzz pedals. It has one of the most interesting choruses on the album, as the lyrics change slightly but hammer home the same sentiment: Something is really not necessary.”
10) “Mahou”
“Named after the Spanish beer that kept us hydrated during our two-month retreat, this track was born from the thick of our unchecked jam sessions. Taking some inspiration from sludgy rock legends like Queens Of The Stone Age, it serves as an intro of sorts as we transition to the next track.”
11) “Timely”
“Renting in today’s economy is one of the cruelest jokes in modern life. I wanted to take a stab at exploiting that feeling—leftover dog hair from previous tenants, how we all might be better off living in hotel rooms.”
12) “All By Design”
“This one also carries some of that Fontaines D.C. flair, plus a few other acts we’ve always admired: Radiohead and the Strokes. It had the working title of ‘Sgt. Slippers’ during the demo phase. We didn’t really land on a title until we started discussing the album’s themes. A TikTok edit of A Bug’s Life was key when crafting the lyrics. The line ‘little baby, five years old’ always hits me like a ton of bricks, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s some undiscovered trauma.”
13) “The Party’s Over”
“Vocally, ‘The Party’s Over’ is my dollar-store Alex Turner impression from the post-AM Arctic Monkeys albums. A palate cleanser before the closer, this song is a nice change of pace.”
14) “Ducks On The Pond”
“This one deals with another toxic modern problem—gambling—in sort of tongue-in-cheek fashion. We just want that quick hit to give us life and help the days move on. The meat of the track is inspired by the dad-rock acts that attempted to steal Nirvana’s thunder. The ending is us at our largest.”
See the Hails live.
