MAKE ROOM FOR HAND HABITS, ACE GUITARIST-FOR-HIRE EXPLORING NEW SPACES
“I was exploring different parts of my identity.” MEG DUFFY
FINDING NEW rooms in your house is a common dream, a symbol, perhaps, of new possibilities, emerging selves. For Meg Duffy, singer and guitarist behind Hand Habits, the dream of domestic discovery translated into the process of making their third album, Fun House. Duffy moved to a new place in Los Angeles last April as everything shut down: roommates Sasami Ashworth and Kyle Thomas became the literal in-house producer and engineer. “Sonically we were trying to take up a lot of space, spread out into this symbolic house. I was exploring different parts of my identity,” says Duffy, who describes themself as trans non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, “and that fits really beautifully into the architecture of a home, exploring what every part of it looks like.”
From this foundation, Duffy’s vivid, fluid songs could embrace the past, the unreliable flicker of memory. “It was important to have these more harrowing themes and make them not seem like a funeral dirge,” says Duffy. Of many startling images that flash out, the most striking is from Aquamarine’s spectral country disco: “I didn’t know she played guitar/Until I turned 27.”
“My mother committed suicide when I was four and most of that record, I think, is for her,” explains Duffy. The revelation came when a distant cousin sent a “memory box” – including earrings made from Duffy’s aquamarine birthstone. “My cousin told me that my mother played guitar and I did not even know that. It changed the way I perceived myself. Like, so much of my artistic ability could have come from her.”
Raised in Amsterdam, New York, at times Duffy lived with two uncles, one who played guitars, one who made them. Playing drums through high school, jamming to Led Zeppelin with “all the guys”, Duffy turned to guitar at 16. “I never thought that I would write songs or sing. I just thought I would be a lead guitar player in someone else’s band. Like a blues-rock bar band, because that’s what I was exposed to.” Instead, when their band Better Pills opened in Albany for Kevin Morby in 2015, a “psychedelic” sense of connection led to an invitation to join Morby’s group. Later, Duffy’s blossoming reputation would lead them to play and record with The War On Drugs, Weyes Blood and Perfume Genius.
Fun House, however, sees Duffy fully occupying their own space.
“These closed doors that I have,” says Duffy, “I want to open them and explore deeper.”
Hand Habits’ Fun House is released by Saddle Creek on October 22.