In Conversation with Meg Duffy of Hand Habits
It’s the week before their album’s release and Meg Duffy is feeling proud. A few days previous, Meg – who’s made music as Hand Habits since the mid 2010s – sat among a host of friends and fellow musicians for a listening party where, through a “really nice hi-fi system”, Meg played them all Blue Reminder, the latest LP in Hand Habits’ ever-growing, ever-shifting catalogue.
“I guess some people like to torture themselves that way, but it’s never something I’ve wanted to do,” Meg laughs, reflecting on the event. “During the first two songs all I could think was that I’d made a huge mistake, that I shouldn't have put myself in this situation. But everybody was so sweet. It was such a sweet experience. Your music changes when you listen to it with other people…”
Co-produced with Joseph Lorge (Japanese Breakfast, Perfume Genius, The Weather Station) Blue Reminder was driven by Meg’s affinity for “playing live in a room with other musicians” and, suitably, gathers up a cast that features Alan Wyffels, partner of Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas, Gregory Uhlmann, who Meg performs with in side-project Duffy x Uhlmann, singer-songwriter Olivia Kaplan, and the guitarist/producer extraordinaire Blake Mills, among significant others. It’s a beautiful collection of songs, full of textural and lush soundscapes, and one that, thematically, finds Meg wandering into new territory. “For this record I set out to write less as a way to process grief, dredge up trauma, or consider heartache, and more as a way to tap into something that was surprisingly more challenging,” Meg writes in the album’s introduction.
That challenge came in the form of love – love in all its strange forms. Embracing, crushing, all consuming. Beautiful and broken. As a process, it was daunting and complicated, and Meg has described love songs, in their traditional form at least, as “corny”, despite their reoccurrence here. So there’s trepidation here but, having found a way through, Meg is ready for the songs to be heard, for them to change form once again.
“I'm very ready for it to be released,” Meg attests. “You know in a movie when there's a satellite view of the Earth? Then it just zooms all the way in from space, until it’s focused right on someone's face? That's what putting a record always feels like to me. It starts really amorphous, and then it becomes really hyper focused, and then it completely changes form again, once it's out. So that’s how I feel right now,” Meg adds, “but I think out of all the records I've ever made, I’m most proud of this one.”
Blue Reminder is the first Hand Habits release since 2023’s Sugar The Bruise, a six-song EP made with Here We Go Magic’s Luke Temple. Meg calls that EP an “experimental…thing”, an in-the-moment capturing that began with no fixed plan of what they were hoping to achieve. “That was my Neil Young Trans record,” Meg jokes. “It’s not that out-there in the grand scheme of things, but I was doing stuff I wouldn’t normally do in the studio. And Luke was the perfect person to do that with. He eggs you on, he dares you.”
With that more freeform endeavour wrapped up and released, Meg began to think of the what-next. The only rough idea, they say, was to make ‘Placeholder 2’, a reference to their 2019 LP which, Meg Says, was the first record where they felt like they’d really found their place. The key to that was trust, and as Blue Reminder began to take shape, Meg found themselves in a place where they knew they had to rely on such instincts. “I was trusting myself more on this record than I ever really have, while also trusting other people,” Meg explains. “I often find that hard, and end up overcorrecting in both ways. I either feel like everybody knows better than I do, or I know everything. I think I found a really good balance here.”
That sense of trust feels bound to the album’s deeper themes. Blue Reminder wasn’t just an exercise in writing about different subjects, it’s a reflection of Meg’s current life. For the first time in a long time, life feels somewhat settled. They’ve spent the last few years playing in Perfume Genius’ band, a role that, Meg says, has taught them so much about their own music, and also instilled a level of confidence that wasn’t there before. They’re also currently in the longest relationship of their life. Life is tough, such is the way, but there is joy and hope; endless juxtaposition. “I think I’ve found a good balance with where I'm at now, especially in terms of the writing for this record,” Meg attests. “Some things were feeling really vulnerable, and really exposing, but for the first time I wasn't writing to get someone else's approval.”
Musically, Blue Reminder is layered and gorgeous, Meg’s wavering voice finding all new ways to bring these stories to life. Aimee Mann and Neko Case are cited as key references, pivotal figures of edgy, emotive 90s indie rock. Folk aesthetics drift in and out, there are jazzy interludes; space opens up and remains, brooding and tinged with melancholy. There’s playfulness here too though, a wry smile in dappled sunlight. ‘Bluebird of Happiness’ is punchy and direct, the kind of glistening pop song you could imagine pouring out of radio speakers and into the wider world, while the closing one-two of ‘Quiet Summer’ and ‘Living Proof’ are decadent and heaving with emotion, right up there with the very best work of Meg’s career thus far. “I never knew what love could do,” Meg repeats, mantra-like, on the latter.
The beating heart of the album lies right there. In love. It threads through the heart of all these songs in some form, gossamer strands that hold the whole album together. “Love can mean so many different things, to so many different people – and it's amazing that that's a truth,” Meg says, diving into the core of their new work. “I think you choose to love, every day. I remember hearing people say that when I was in my early 20s, and hoping that surely love can't just be a conscious decision. I saw it as a magical and inexplicable whirlwind that made you do crazy things. And it is! But now I see that both can be true,” Meg adds. “I make a conscious promise to myself and to my relationship. It’s a choice to commit and to show up for someone; to really keep your word. That has manifested so much in my music, too. I’m learning to be flexible, and I've been so pleasantly surprised with what can come from staying. I've been a leaver for a long time but I'm curious about doing things differently now, especially when it comes to my behaviour; my relationship to other people, my relationship to love.”
The album’s title is a nod to where Meg’s writing has tended to previously focus; blue reminders of what’s come before; delving into past pains. “It's so comfortable for me to be like ‘you hurt me, and I'm suffering, but I'll show you!’,” Meg explains. “The groove of self-protection has been really deep. But here, I feel like I was just trying to write truthfully. I'm not really used to being my true self, my authentic self,” they continue. “That's an uncomfortable place for me – but it was part of my spiritual practice with making this record, and trying to feel proud of what I make.”
And Meg does feel proud of this work – openly and unabashedly proud. It’s 2025, though, and so that pride is always shrouded in difficulty, the political world leaving so little space right now for joy, for the sharing of joy, for unabashed celebration. “It's really challenging, and it's been challenging to do press around a record that I wrote when I was feeling really hopeful,” Meg admits. “This isn’t a concept record about joy, there’s also suffering here, but when I was finishing this album things were escalating so quickly. Trump got elected. There's a genocide happening right now in Palestine. It's really a challenge to feel like it even matters to talk about my music; this one singular life that’s pretty shrouded in privilege.”
What drives Meg’s desire to do so is threaded through these songs, is part of the wider story of their life and the stories they want to share through their work. “I've talked about this a lot with my partner and with people whose opinions I really admire and respect, and I do think it's important for the world to see that trans people, and queer people, can have functioning relationships,” Meg explains. “That we can even have success – and I say that word lightly – and also we can experience joy, and experience a whole range of emotions, not just suffering. It's so easy for people to politicise it, to say that queer people suffer because they're broken, and that's why they're queer – and I just don’t believe that,” Meg continues.
“Yes, I’ve struggled with my identity, and I’ve suffered in various other ways, but it's not because I'm trans, it's because I'm a human. So I think it’s important to share hope, and it’s important for people to see queer desire without it being sexualised or sensationalised. So, I do feel like it's important,” Meg adds. “Do I think that it's important that I do it? No, not all the time, but I do really hope that these songs find their way to people who are really suffering, and that they can find some hope in them.”
Blue Reminder is out now, via Fat Possum Records
You can buy/stream it here
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