Hand Habits is the recording project Meg Duffy, a member of Mega Bog and Kevin Morby’s band who in 2017 struck out solo with the excellent Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void) on Woodsist. The album was supremely intimate, wrapped in a confidential tone that created a contract between the writer and the listener, offering them a glimpse past Duffy the guitarist into Duffy the human being.
This spring heralds the second Hand Habits record, placeholder, and though the spirit of the sound remains personal, the release sees Duffy invite collaborators into the process. If the first album was a necessarily solo release, a formative period that cemented an identity and sound, then the second is the product of a newfound confidence. The Hand Habits identity is now solid enough to be released from confinement, and cross-pollination does not detract from its singularity but rather enhances it.
It is fitting then that placeholder is concerned with matters of self-discovery, especially the idea of events and experiences being stepping stones toward self-acceptance and actualisation. “A big aspect of my songwriting and the way I move through the world depends on my relationships with people.” Duffy explains. “The songs on placeholder are about accountability and forgiveness. These are all real stories. I don’t fictionalize much.”
The title track opens with this in mind, a relationship not as an end but a means, serving to move one closer to oneself and not the other person. There is suspicion and betrayal here, the sense that selfishness governs every connection, but Duffy configures this into something useful, an opportunity to learn. Not that things are so simple, and the contradiction of the following track shows the uncertainty and ambiguity that is present across the record. The nostalgic tones of ‘can’t calm down’ are balanced by a sense of fear, the creeping dread that the past might not be something we can move away from. What if trauma is hereditary, or violent enough to work its way into our DNA nonetheless, a mutation that becomes part of our make-up through no choice of our own?
now what if they were wrong?
i don’t wanna be that
what if i can’t calm down and i don’t have that in my bloodline? what if the faces of the holy are just faces from a fantasy
and i can’t see through their eyes?
although that i try
The single comes complete with a video directed and edited by Vanessa Haddad with cinematography from Adam Gundersheimer. The film is a vampire story, Duffy waking next to a victim and searching for another, a compulsion or curse that drives behaviour no matter how uncomfortable or sad.
Such a combination of delicate and forceful marks the Hand Habits sound on placeholder, the paradoxical nature of requiring immense strength to show one’s weaknesses. “And I let you see the part of me,” Duffy sings on ‘yr heart [reprise]’, a song filled with imagery of falling stars and backyard fires. “They call it understanding / they call it vulnerability.” The method instils a focus and precision that was lacking on the more diffuse debut record, so while the thematic core of the album might centre on anxiety, doubt and undefinable experiences, Duffy’s writing is always assured.
The result is a confident and mature collection of songs that is willing to forego simple answers in favour of nuance and depth. The tracks are marbled with anxiety, yes, but even when this takes over (Like on ‘Jessica’), Duffy strives to view the situation in a wide lens. Forgiveness is offered to past loves not as some heroic gesture or unlikely ideal but rather as a way to keep open the path that is one’s life, as though to dwell on pain too long is to collapse into a single dimension—and one too simple to adequately explain the intricacies of life.
Better then to resist the allure of simple narratives, to remain open to the wonder and sadness that comes with the unknown in the hope that such forces will lead you back to your true self. “When I want to misbehave / think about my mothers grave,” Duffy sings in the opening lines of the final track ‘the book on how to change part II’, “and the book on how to change / wasn’t written in one day.” The sound is perhaps the warmest on the record, an acceptance of the idea that there is no map to follow or paragon to mimic, the song an epiphany not as experienced in one epic beam of light but more slowly, a gradual retrieval of clarity. “When I want to feel misplaced / think about my mother’s face,” goes the closing verse, “and the book on how to change / never taught me anything.”
placeholder is out now via Saddle Creek and you can get it from the Hand Habits Bandcamp page.
