The new EP Prince of Tides from Charleston rock outfit The Puddleducks flies by with a refreshing frankness, packed with plenty of lyrics about destructive tendencies and wondering what’s on someone else’s mind.
“It’s a coming-of-age album, so we wanted to have a sound with a ’90s/early-2000s feel without necessarily being a carbon copy,” bassist Wade Alexander told the Charleston City Paper.
The Puddleducks locked in as a four-piece last summer when Alexander, drummer Weston DeWolff and guitarist Allen McDonald welcomed lo-fi pop artist Joseph Dubay as their frontman. Alexander, DeWolff and Dubay were Charleston County School of the Arts graduates together.
“We all grew up in the ’90s here in Charleston,” Alexander said. “We have a lot of themes about relationships between you and your buddies, you and a romantic thing — good and bad. And then having that layered over with a film of maritime, coastal energy that shaded a lot of phases of our youth.”
Prince of Tides is named after the Pat Conroy novel of the same title, and the song “Water’s Edge” name checks the well-known author. It was recorded in February at Darkroot Studios in Rome, Georgia, with producer Austin Earp, following up the band’s debut EP, Sneaking Out, released last October. Weston, who has a master’s degree in visual illustration, created the album art that depicts the webbed feet of a duck.
Right before the 2020 shutdown, Alexander bought a 1988 Privateer Roamer boat, which looks like a mini lobster boat with a small cabin on it. His dad said it reminded him of a puddle duck, and from that came the band’s name — which Dubay said also hails back to English writer Beatrix Potter’s 1908 children’s book The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.
“We said we’ll just name it after the boat because our sound is super raw and dinged up around the edges — just garage rock,” Alexander said. “It’s a great juxtaposition now because the more we solidify our sound it gets funnier since Puddleducks sounds super unassuming.”
Dubay added, “The songs go harder than the band name would suggest, which I think is really fun.”
He sings with an unfocused displeasure, edgy about nothing in particular, evoking a familiar 20-something-year-old angst.
“We only tackle problems when the problem is me,” Dubay sings on the first track “Crank It (To Zero).” The song “Waiting on Angels” captures a muted longing that bleeds into the next track, “My Everything.”
“Am I still your anything? / ‘cause you’re still my everything,” Dubay wonders on “My Everything,” closing out the song with a dose of congenial scream-singing.
The refrain “I need a cigarette / I don’t smoke” keeps time on “Body High,” and the wound up, fast talking “Water’s Edge” is a fitting end to the fun EP.
The entirety of Prince of Tides looks at different ways people interact with circumstances, Dubay said.
“ ‘Body High,’ the single that we put out last month, that’s the relationship between the performer and the audience,” he said. “Then there’s ‘Crank It,’ which is about having a fight with someone you care about, but it’s not a big deal even though you’re both pissed. ‘Water’s Edge’ is about friends and having fun and being on a boat and going out.
“For a sophomore release, [there’s more] intentionality with this one. There’s still room to grow in terms of cohesion, but I really love how these five songs fit together. If you listen to the whole thing all the way through, you walk away with a solid understanding of the relational aspects we’re trying to get out,” Dubay said.
In addition to Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Foo Fighters, the members have diverse tastes for psychedelic, lo-fi pop, vaporwave and polyrhythmic world music between them, so they keep a running playlist of songs that catch their attention to trace similarities and fuel songwriting. And as The Puddleducks looks forward to performing more shows soon, what remains most important is appreciating the privilege to play music together.
“It’s an indescribable joy that comes with jamming with my friends,” DeWolff said. “It’s just such a nice relaxation to step back from the priorities and responsibilities of the real world. I find writing with these guys super meditative in a way, and really fulfilling.”
Alexander added, “For me, music is a vessel, something all of us can build together.”
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