Hand Habits, the project of multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Meg Duffy, has announced a new LP. Blue Reminder is slated to arrive on August 22 via Fat Possum. It’s led by the bristly, yearning new song ‘Wheel of Change’, which comes paired with a video from director Otium. Check out below, and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
“Both lyrically and in its production, this song is about the impossibility of return—you can’t go back to the way things were, no matter how much you might want to hold on to a time, or a feeling, or a person,” Duffy explained in a press release. “Lyrically there’s a kind of desperation (‘I need it now more than ever’), but in it there’s also a request, ‘don’t take it away just yet,’ which is not a question but a demand, and I wanted the production to reflect that. That in longing, there can be this sharper, wild edge. Like, no I need this, give it to me, don’t take it away.”
Duffy recorded Blue Reminder in Los Angeles with co-producer Joseph Lorge. It features a crew of collaborators including Alan Wyffels, Gregory Uhlmann, Olivia Kaplan, Blake Mills, Tim Carr, Daniel Aged, and Joshua Johnson and Anna Butters of SML. “For this record I set out to no longer shapeshift when it came to the person I become in the face of love,” Duffy shared.
“Of course the weight of the past is always in the room with me when I sit down to write,” they added. “It is filtered through my way of making even the most precious moments imbued with something blue — the constant reminder is there — but I have spent so much time writing as a means to work through pain, or place blame on myself or others, and I am at a point in my life where I’m more interested in acceptance, forgiveness, and exploring what it means to need and be needed.”
Back in 2023, Hand Habits released the mini-record Sugar the Bruise. Last year, they contributed to the solo piano music compilation piano1, and recently joined the National’s Matt Berninger on his single ‘Breaking into Acting’.
Blue Reminder Cover Artwork:
Blue Reminder Tracklist:
1. More Today
2. Wheel of Change
3. Nubble
4. Dead Rat
5. Jasmine Blossoms
6. Way It Goes
7. (Forgiveness)
8. Beauty 62
9. Bluebird of Happiness
10. Blue Reminder
11. Quiet Summer
12. Living Proof
