Hand Habits Confirm New Album & Ask Is There ‘Something Wrong’ On Lead Single

Hand Habits, the project of Los Angeles-based musician Meg Duffy, announced a new album, Sugar The Bruise, arriving on June 16 via Fat Possum Records. Duffy also shared the lead single, “Something Wrong.”

Sugar The Bruise saw Duffy working with Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic, Art Feynman), Philip Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker, Cass McCombs) and Jeremy Harris in producing the record. Drawing inspiration from a songwriting class they taught in Summer 2021, Meg detailed Sugar The Bruise in a statement. Read an excerpt below:

Music, for me, has always been a spoonful of honey easing the intermittent and inescapable bitterness of the human experience. It’s been a thick sweetness in my loneliest moments. In my earliest memories of playing music, whether alone or in a group, the feeling of being connected to a greater force beyond explanation is the one that shines through. I’ve been deeply committed to the path of conjuring this elusive yet poignant feeling through playing guitar, through making songs and sounds and sharing them with others. Before I started writing songs with verses and choruses, improvising was primarily how I found myself in musical settings. It is still a bright beacon of my approach to songwriting and composition. Sonny Rollins said that improvisation is about forgetting, not remembering. That when one’s mind goes blank, the ideas that come are from an untraceable source. I find that the songs I feel the most connected to come from this source-from the voidal space of the unknown. There is something euphoric to me about entering this void with intention, with other people, in a studio setting. The desire to disappear within a song or a melody or a groove or unexpected dissonance is what keeps me always listening, always searching. I believe this desire is inextricable from the risk of ‘failure’ or making ‘mistakes’.

For Sugar the Bruise, I had no plan other than to let my mind go blank, and lean into the playful side of things. To laugh a little, to lighten up, to shift the focus off of my own experience a bit. What if making a song didn’t mean dredging up the abyss? Of course, at baseline I am pulled towards nourishing the unfolding of memory into something beautiful, something archetypal/universal, and sharing it with you. And like all good muses, it’s easy to project whatever narrative you are carrying onto them.

So I hope you enjoy this collection of songs. I like to think of them akin to a novella or short film. My wish is that these songs provide a mirror to those who can’t find their own ways to explain the knots of twisted emotions we all deal with.

I offer you a little sugar to the bruise of being born. A little sugar to the bruise of existence.

love,

md

Preview Sugar The Bruise with “Something Wrong” below:

Following a previously announced California concert with Tegan and Sara as well as a spot at Big Sur’s Hipnic festival, Hand Habits embark on a 2023 West Caost tour beginning with a concert in Healdsburg, Califonria on June 16. The run also includes stops in Portland, Vanocuver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Sugar The Bruise Tracklist:

1. Something Wrong
2. The Gift of The Human Curse
3. Andy in Stereo
4. Private Life
5. The Book on How to Change pt.3
6. The Bust of Nefertiti