Hand Habits

Hand Habits

Sugar The Bruise EP

Fat Possum

***Inspired by month-long songwriting class Duffy taught in the summer of 2021, they re-discovered, with newfound clarity, the generative capacity of embracing the unknown, and how essential collaboration and improvisation are for accessing the indescribable. Working with Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic, Art Feynman) and Philip Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker, Cass McCombs), Duffy surrendered to the present moment, trusting that whatever sounds and words emerged were meant to emerge. With additional production, engineering and arranging from Jeremy Harris, Duffy created something which, in their words, “turned out nothing like I’d imagined it would.” The result of this collective experiment, born equally from play and intention, is a radical gift for listeners: proof that our most vital processes, creation and destruction, are exquisitely entangled. The unanswerable and untenable suffering of experience is the fact of perpetual loss. And, yet, there is precious, vivid magic created by this condition. In Sugar the Bruise, grief folds in on itself and becomes laughter; language fades away into sonic expanses of the inexpressible; melodies melt into cacophonies; love songs surrender to loss; historic violence is supplanted by the disks of sunlight. Pressed on milky white vinyl.

Hand Habits

Wildly Idle (humble Before The Void)

Woodsist

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. “Singer, songwriter and guitarist from Upstate New York Meg Duffy, aka Hand Habits, has been putting in her time on the road and in the studio over the past two years with Pacific Northwest band Mega Bog, and the Kevin Morby Band, making an impression on everyone she comes across with her natural charisma and uncharted talent as a multiinstrumentalist. But let Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void) be her open invitation to the world to step inside and take a much deeper look into who Duffy actually is. “Tracked in an Upstate New York living room, then finished in her current home in Los Angeles, this album was recorded by Meg herself; she has an acute ear for detail, has touched every corner, has seen every vision ’til its end. Because of this, Wildly Idle feels incredibly intimate, like a secret between her and the listener. It hits soft, like warm water all around you, a bath, and before you know it Meg’s whisper has made its way inside you. Meg has music in her touch, and this, like many bedroom-debuts (Microphones, Jessica Pratt, Little Wings, Grouper) is only the beginning. But let us not look to the future now, and instead stand alongside her, our trust in her will, both humble before the void, with her first chorus as the mission statement: Hold you like a flower, hold you like an hour glass.” —Kevin Morby