Meg Duffy, the multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who records as Hand Habits, released their new album Blue Reminder last week on Fat Possum Records.
Recorded in Los Angeles with co-producer Joseph Lorge, the record finds Duffy surrounded by an impressive community of collaborators: Alan Wyffels, Gregory Uhlmann, Olivia Kaplan, Blake Mills, Tim Carr, Daniel Aged, and Joshua Johnson and Anna Butters of SML. Having spent much of the past decade on the road—both as a solo artist and as a touring member of Perfume Genius, Duffy leaned into their deep love of playing in a room with other musicians, and the result is an album largely tracked live.
For artists who have built a creative practice centered around vulnerability, what could possibly feel more exposing? For Duffy, it turns out, there are things even more daunting than excavating unhappiness or grappling with personal identity like they have in their previous critically acclaimed albums as Hand Habits.
“Of course the weight of the past is always in the room with me when I sit down to write,” Duffy explains,”It is filtered through my way of making even the most precious moments imbued with something blue — the constant reminder is there — but I have spent so much time writing as a means to work through pain, or place blame on myself or others, and I am at a point in my life where I’m more interested in acceptance, forgiveness, and exploring what it means to need and be needed.”
This collection of songs largely eschew the more insular nature of earlier Hand Habits records, instead veering into a more guitar-forward sound.Throughout the songs, guitars fuzz, drums move to the forefront, and the occasional horn or wurlitzer pass through. Everything feels elevated.
“I think it’s so corny to write love songs,” admits Duffy, who is somewhat loath to think of Blue Reminder as simply a love record. “I can’t deny that a lot of these are ostensibly love songs, but they are also love songs through my very specific kind of lens. It is about how falling in love does feel both terrifying and exciting, but this record is about commitment in a lot of ways. Committing to a person, to an idea, to being a more honest version of yourself.
While Duffy doesn’t necessarily want the entire narrative around Blue Reminder to circle around romantic love, or to perhaps suggest that it’s only romantic love that allows us to be actualized or fulfilled, it does feel important to celebrate the joy of such things at a time when queer and trans people are largely being vilified. In a moment where there is so much fear and uncertainty, loudly articulating happiness and giving voice to healthy relationships feels like a profound pushback against all the darkness.
“When I reflect on how society can punish or cruelly imply a brokenness to anyone who lives in the margins of a limited range of what they consider normal, or imply they are the way they are because of a defect or illness, it’s hard not to internalize some of this way of thinking. I’ve done a lot of work to accept myself for who I am, and that I deserve to live as the truest version of myself, and that my mistakes and shortcomings are human, not as a result of my identity. That it is possible for queer/trans people to have healthy, loving, passionate, and functional lives and relationships. That we can be in and contribute to the community. That we can be loved for, not in spite of who we are. Even though we are living a nightmare right now in a lot of ways, this record is about living the dream. It’s a reminder that the dream is possible.”
That sense of connection was on full display at Hand Habits’ album release show on August 23 at 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles. The venue, tucked away in Historic Filipinotown, felt more like a gathering space than a stage, dimly lit, draped in blue light, with three glowing screens hanging behind the band. The setting was calming, and the audience, seated, leaned into a quiet, almost meditative quality.
When Duffy stepped onto the stage, the reception was warm, a gentle applause, murmurs of recognition, a wave of attention settling over the room like a collective focus of people who truly had come to listen.
The set began with “More Today,” moving through “Nubble” and “Dead Rat,” songs that revealed the album’s live textures.
Between songs, Duffy kept the mood light, joking about not playing Blue Reminder in order: “ Because that would be boring and if you want to listen to the songs in order, you could just listen to the album.” drawing an easy laughter from the crowd.
The set blended new songs with older favorites like “Placeholder,” “What Lovers Do,” and “4th of July.
It was such an intimate show, energy tempered, never overwhelming, the audience seated, attentive, caught in an ebb and flow. It was the kind of performance where silence carried just as much weight as sound. Under the blue lights, the songs from Blue Reminder unfolded as a shared reverie, time suspended outside the noise of the world, where listening itself felt like an act of presence.
