Three-quarters of the way through Hand Habits’ 2021 album Fun House, Meg Duffy let loose an unexpected wail on “Concrete & Feathers,” their voice twisting to an anguished howl. On their first few releases, Duffy had mostly sung in a hushed voice over intimate, introspective indie rock. But on their third album, they took bolder turns, occasionally bursting into instrumental catharsis—and pushing their singing to newly commanding territory.
Duffy doesn’t make you wait until the final stretch of Blue Reminder, Hand Habits’ latest record, to hear their voice reach such emotional depths. Opener “More Today” begins with a murmur: Duffy’s soft singing over gentle strums; then the crunch of electric guitar, Wurlitzer, drums. Eventually, the instrumentation quiets, making way for Duffy’s clear, strong voice: “I want it all or nothing,” they cry at the song’s climax—like a starting gun for their most sure-footed, adventurous collection of songs to date.
It would perhaps be too easy to pin this newfound confidence on one specific source—namely, that Duffy wrote much of the album after falling in love. But here, love doesn’t inspire grand declarations so much as quiet awe: “I want to wake you up/And tell you how I love you,” they murmur over a gentle brush of keys on “Dead Rat.” “Loneliness has disappeared,” they realize over the propulsive beat of “Bluebird of Happiness”; “I never thought I’d see the day.” They’re also acutely aware of love’s fragility—“I'm afraid of losing you/I’ll do anything to prove my love is true,” Duffy admits on the title track—and of the struggle it took to find it. On “Way It Goes,” they’re reminded of a past hearbreak, realizing that you can “lose your confidence for someone who doesnt give a fuck”; the track sounds woozy and warped, underscoring its theme of imperfect recollection.
The midsection of “Way It Goes” is haunted by a wash of flutes and a flutter of piano that spills into the following song, “(Forgiveness),” an instrumental track where a saxophone patiently meanders atop a steadying beat. Outside of Hand Habits, Duffy has a long musical resume—in their instrumental duo with Gregory Uhlmann; as a touring member with Perfume Genius and Kevin Morby; and as a guitarist on records from the War on Drugs, Weyes Blood, and SASAMI—and “(Forgiveness)” feels like a deepening of their genre experiments across those projects.
Though Duffy’s voice and sensibility guide the record, the fingerprints of their musical community are all over Blue Reminder, including (among others) Uhlmann on guitar, bass, and percussion; Perfume Genius’ Alan Wyffels on piano, Wurlitzer, and flute; producer Blake Mills on organ and guitar. Together, the band shapeshifts across a range of sounds. “Wheel of Change,” with its Americana lilt, swaggers forward then gets knocked off balance; closing track “Living Proof” is insular and subdued, with gentle swells of piano and synthesizer. Throughout, the record highlights Duffy’s acrobatic guitar playing, like the playful riffs that tumble through the center of “Bluebird of Happiness” and the understated solo that patiently unfolds on “Quiet Summer.” The jaunty melodies on “Jasmine Blossoms” provide a sly contrast with lyrics about trying to “find a little joy” among the “ending of the western world.”
The album is rife with these dualities: how contentment can commingle with anxiety; how the past bears on the present; how new love can show up just when the world seems hopeless. In one short lyric, tucked into the aqueous synths and pulsating rhythms of “Beauty 62,” Duffy offers something of a mission statement for continuing to probe these paradoxes: “Songs bloom,” they sing, “from the wreckage.”
