Q&A: Searows Relinquishes Control on Sophomore Album ‘Death in the Business of Whaling’

Searows, a.k.a. Oregon-based singer/songwriter Alec Duckart, has come a long way from his first uploads on Soundcloud and Bandcamp in high school a decade ago. After debuting with Guard Dog in 2022, the indie folk artist quickly cemented himself in the niche of internet sad girl music with his TikTok viral “House Song” just a year later. But, Duckart is by no means one-note. Rather than just being a soundtrack to languishing, his songs thoughtfully sift through emotions for treasure. 

Duckart has toured the U.S. and Europe, opened for Gracie Abrams and Ethel Cain, and after his End Of The World EP(2023), isnow on his third release, Death in the Business of Whaling. 

Now in his quarter life, Whaling is a meditation on mortality, life, and the human condition. It emerged from Duckart’s subconscious, and in many ways, allowed Duckart room to breathe, especially from his self-admitted perfectionism.

“I feel like every project that I’ve done has kind of changed the way that I write songs. Every time I finish a project, I’m thinking about how I would write it differently just a few months later. But I feel like this, this album is the first time that I sort of stand by what I wrote a little bit more,” Duckart said during our conversation via Zoom call.

This time around, Duckart let go of his tendency to bare his soul through sharing his more literal, personal experiences. He focused instead on the abstract, capturing feelings and turning them into fictional stories. “I’ve been thinking of it as like a lot of stories. It feels like a very intentionally cinematic and sort of dramatized project,” Duckart said.

The album is like a book itself, with its songs being subconsciously inspired by multiple literary works—from Jonah being in the belly of the whale in the biblical Leviathan, to Captain Ahab’s journey in Moby Dick, where the album title comes from.

While Moby Dick wasn’t an assigned reading for Duckart, the work has shown up in many ways in his life. It’s a book his older sibling loves, and he actually stole one of their four copies. And, at 16, Duckart actually acted in a play version of Moby Dick as “one of the guys on the ship. It was like a production with people that were all older than me.”

But, Duckart wasn’t the one that found the quote that would become the album’s title: “Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity.”

“It was actually my partner who was looking through [books] because I really needed to find a title for the album. I felt like it needed a long title for some reason. I had been listening to the album and realizing how much I had been very unconsciously inspired by Moby Dick, and a lot of different stories that I was unintentionally pulling from,” Duckart explained. “[While] looking through one of the copies of Moby Dick that I have, they said it out loud. And I was like, that’s kind of awesome. Then we just called the album that for weeks.”

And so Whaling stuck.

Duckart’s collaboration with his partner, Marlowe Ostara, really shines on Whaling. Out of the album’s nine songs, four have a visual component with direction or video credits attributed to the latter. 

“For the music videos, it was definitely far more my partner and my and our friend Karlee Boone. Both of them know how this stuff works, more than me. My partner, Marlowe was very much coming up with a lot of the concepts, especially ‘Dirt,’ ” Duckart noted.

Whaling’s music videos were inspired by horror films, and it came naturally. “I think we were just thinking about horror movies a lot in general, like I feel like it was intentional, maybe a little bit subconsciously,” Duckart said.

They leave no stone unturned. “Dirt” pulls from 1930s gothic horror to deliver dreamy visuals, while “Photograph of a Cyclone,” is, in Duckart’s words, “very much like B-movie, found footage.”

But why vampires? 

“I don’t know. We just thought it would be funny,” Duckart laughed. “We were going on a trip, and we needed to make a video. It was low budget. We were using all of our budget on the ‘Dearly Missed’ and the ‘Dirt’ video.”

Continuing the horror streak, “Dearly Missed” is Duckart’s experiment in the “Good for Her” horror subgenre, which also inspired the songwriting. Having complete artistic control means that you can do anything, so why not kill men?

“I was thinking about shitty men that I met or knew when I was younger. I feel like it’s the the fantasy of taking some sort of control from violent men and wanting to kill them, maybe,” Duckart laughs. “I was thinking about Jennifer’s Body and so many movies in that genre. I think it’s just a very satisfying genre because, where else do you get to fulfill that fantasy of being violent back?”

Whaling is almost a mosaic of the various forms of art that have influenced Duckart. In addition to literature and film, poetry also had a role in its creation.

Duckart’s favorite lyric on the Whaling album, which he admits is “cheating,” references Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild geese’: “You do not have to do good / But you cannot do nothing.” The original poem goes, “You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees.”

The original verse took some time for him to come around to, but it was a realization that he needed. “I felt satisfied that I was able to convey the thought that I was having when I [first] read the poem. I didn’t understand the first line. I feel like I read that for so many years, and was like, ‘Yeah, but I do [have to be good],’” Duckart shared.

Duckart reconciles his feelings in his version, the album’s last track titled “Geese,” and reflects on being paralyzed by the possibility of being morally imperfect. “It was feeling so stunted and stuck by trying to live your life being good and morally perfect all the time, to a point where I’m not even doing anything in my life, because I’m terrified of not being good,” Duckart said.

Ultimately, Whaling is Duckart’s foray into complicated feelings, and turning them from obstacles into oars. Duckart, too, has changed immensely as an artist from when he first started Searows on his own.

“Anything I tried to produce [back then] was crazy. It’s been a lot of improving on skills,” Duckart laughed.

Oddly enough, despite the clear passion and love he has for his work, the amount of time he’s invested into his craft hasn’t fully hit him.

“I’ve grown so much as a person since 16, that so much has changed artistically, too. I didn’t even think about how it’s been a decade. It feels like it hasn’t been that long, because I still spent years feeling like I wasn’t really making music in a serious way. It felt like a hobby for so many years that it didn’t feel like a real thing,” Duckart said. “I don’t even remember what the question was. I was too shocked.”

Time flies when you’re having fun. And with time comes wisdom. Duckart remains as committed as he was in the beginning. He’s only grown musically, especially now that he’s no longer working alone. “It’s been a journey in terms of working with other people in the music part, like, learning how to do that because I did it myself for so long. I’m really getting better at knowing how to let go of control and accept other people’s ideas and help,” Duckart said.

For Whaling, instead of working out of his Portland home where previous EPs were birthed, Duckart ventured to a converted horse barn outside of Seattle to work on the album alongside producer Trevor Spencer (Beach House, Father John Misty). It’s still the same Pacific Northwest that has nurtured Duckart sound, but just a little different. Most importantly, it forced him to really relinquish his control.

“If I’m doing it by myself, I’m listening to everything, like 24/7, thinking about what I should do with it. So I get sick of it very quickly, and I get extra critical of it very quickly. So it was definitely good to have someone else keeping all of the mixes locked away from me.”

And it paid off.

“I’m a little nervous because some of the songs are a little more challenging to sing, and also, they have such a, like, bigger sound that I want to translate. I’m very excited for it,” Duckart said. “A lot of these songs, there’s more energy in them, which is a lot more fun to do on tour.”

Death in the Business of Whaling is out now.

Interview conducted and story written by Mendy Kong for Staged Haze