#Hand habits full#

You want people to be able to project their own experiences onto this feeling that you’re trying to create and communicate. And if you’re able to feel moved by it, I’m not thinking that you’re so moved by the tragedy of my life or my experience, but it’s maybe just that you can relate to the feeling of it. Once, Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits) would have been best known as the go-to session guitarist for the likes of War On Drugs, Kevin Morby, and Weyes Blood. I’m not talking to a specific ‘you’ when I’m singing a song.

‘The reason I make music is because I’m interested in connecting with people. I think this also coincides with my trans identity too, because so much of that journey for me has been me really fighting against what I’m not ‘allowed’ to be.’ĭuffy explains how they are inspired by working collaboratively and how this was brought into the new album by stepping back, questioning the process and viewing it from a new perspective. I wouldn’t allow myself to step into certain roles because of the little box I was putting myself in based on all of these false narratives that I had come to believe about myself. Sasami empowered me to take up a lot of different sonic spaces and challenged me to rethink these limitations that I had about my own identity. ‘I felt a massive shift in the way that I was seeing the world and seeing myself, moving through certain emotional patterns and behavioural patterns, and really taking them apart. 'When the pandemic happened, everything stopped. Produced by Sasami Ashworth (SASAMI) and engineered by Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was very much the result of taking a difficult, if much-needed, moment of pause. Speaking about the change in musical direction, Hand Habits aka Duffy says: Fun House is Duffy's most ambitious Hand Habits album to date. Emboldened by going into therapy and coaxed by Ashworth to push the songs into unexpected new routes, Fun House is more personal and stylistically adventurous than anything Hand Habits have created before. Produced by Sasami Ashworth ( SASAMI) and engineered by Kyle Thomas ( King Tuff), the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but was the result of taking a moment of pause. Their new album, Fun House, is out now on Saddle Creek and explores a new direction that sees Duffy take on a more electronic landscape. I slammed on the brakes and everything psychologically that I’d been pushing down and ignoring for the past few years suddenly flew to the foreground.Meg Duffy’s indie, soft rock project has long been pleasing music critics and fans alike.

Then, when the world basically stopped, it turned out to be the longest I’ve been alone in my entire life - without being in a relationship, without being on the road, without working myself to exhaustion - and the result was really like, holy shit.

#Hand habits full#

It had been full pedal to the metal in terms of traveling and scheduling, which meant I really didn’t have a lot of time to think about how I felt or really check in with myself. “I had been touring consistently for five years, both on my own and playing in other people’s bands, so I wasn’t really writing a lot in between. “When the pandemic happened, everything stopped,” recalls Duffy. Produced by Sasami Ashworth (SASAMI) and engineered by Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was very much the result of taking a difficult, if much-needed, moment of pause. How much time must we spend examining our own past in order to fully understand it? How can we safely acknowledge pain in order to release it and fully actualize who we are supposed to be? Buffeted by strings, synths, and a gently-shook tambourine, the aptly-titled track, “The Answer,” highlights the emotional engine at the heart of the record. “I know the answer,”Duffy sings, “Here’s what I hope to find – it’s always mine.”įun House is Duffy’s most ambitious Hand Habits album to date. There is a moment halfway through Hand Habits’ Fun House when musician Meg Duffy asks the question, “How many times must I rewind the tape?”It’s a fitting question planted squarely in the middle of a sonically adventurous record concerned largely with making sense and taking stock. Hand Habits had expanded into a band by the arrival of the project's second album, 2019's Placeholder, and two years later, the SASAMI-produced Fun House combined Duffy's reflective folk-leaning instincts with elements of synth pop and dance-rock. All things are relative of course, and Duffy’s restraint pulls back the big Pop moments here from being too broad brushed, but when it hits it’s the perfect marriage of yearning and explosion. Meg Duffy – aka Hand Habits – has returned with a new, bold statement in Fun House that launches their interiorised, emotional inspection into a near-arena sized landscape. Sometimes a record just catches, stays with you long after the final chord is struck.