Meg Duffy burst into tears when they chose the artwork for their new album. The Los Angeles-based musician, better known as Hand Habits, tells me about the illuminating moment on a recent call, their words taking on a meditative cadence. They were in a video conversation with the artist Curtis Santiago, and after surveying his work, they settled on a painting entitled, Whatever lay ahead he already accepted, which depicts a figure from Paris Is Burning wearing a pink-and-blue chainmail durag. With the piece’s deeper meaning unbeknowsnt to them, Duffy chose the painting just because it “felt nonbinary.” When Santiago told them what it was referencing, Duffy recalls, “I was just crying on Zoom.”
The fated artwork pick seemed both reassuring and moving for Duffy, who intended to explore all the aspects of their identity — queer and otherwise — on their upcoming solo album, Fun House, out October 22. Describing it as “entering these rooms of my personality that I might've only entered in fantasy,” the magical project sees Duffy breaking out of their signature indie-folk and Americana sound to create music as multifaceted as they are. Album opener “More Than Love,” which recalls Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac, features Duffy taking their vocals to new heights with energetic new-wave beats and weaving synth lines. Meanwhile, “Control,” with its icy multi-layered vocals and woodwind arrangements, sounds like an earthier, new-age version of 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love.” Through it all, Duffy’s impressionistic lyrics and achingly exquisite voice anchor Fun House, an album where everything falls perfectly into place.
A sought-after touring and session guitarist who has played on albums by The War on Drugs and Weyes Blood, Duffy has steadily carved out their own lane through their work as Hand Habits, launched in 2012. Their last album, 2019’s Placeholder, was filled with delicately sung and intricately arranged “revenge songs,” as they put it, which they now admit placed blame on others for their anguish. After lots of therapy and self-work over the past few years, Duffy began to develop the tracks that would appear on Fun House. The album indicates a sea change, not only in its sound, but in how Duffy writes of their pain — now centering compassion, empathy, and grace.
To help create Fun House, Duffy entrusted Sasami Ashworth, their close friend, housemate, and producer, to produce tracks that wouldn’t just represent “an overly simplified version of myself,” as they explain. They also credit Michael Hadreas of Perfume Genius, who appears on “Just To Hear You,” as another major source of inspiration. Their gratitude for close queer collaborators practically bursts through the computer screen during our video interview, which only feels right, given this project feels like witnessing them step into the resplendent light of joy. “I think healing happens for me when I see that I'm not alone,” as they mention elsewhere in our conversation.
Today, Duffy premieres their new video for Fun House’s “Clean Air,” a V Haddad- directed clip featuring the artist as a brash punk singer. They wanted that tough persona to contrast with their “fairly soft and sensitive music,” Duffy explains. “I like the humor in it, the juxtaposition, and I think it captures my angst that I often feel internally and rarely express externally on stage.” Below, the artist speaks with them. about letting go of anger, the deceptive nature of memory, being a Pisces, and much more.
“Clean Air” has this really beautiful language around boundaries, acceptance and advocating for oneself. Could you speak to that?
I had been touring for a really long time before that and not addressing a bare minimum level of self-care and emotional responsibility. I had a momentum that was quite addictive, but not inherently healthy for me at a spiritual level. I started getting really angry, and I couldn't understand where that anger was coming from.
I was able to go to therapy and do a lot of self-work. I was thinking about addressing this discontent that I was feeling and how it has played out in every dynamic in my life. With these songs, I was trying to figure out what my responsibility is and how I move through relationships in a way that feels more accepting and less angry.
Is that related to the larger themes of forgiveness and compassion on Fun House?
I was trying to see everybody as perfectly imperfect. I had spent so much of my life being angry at people around me and that anger was coming from sadness. I allowed myself to shine a light on a lot of these memories and experiences that I've had, rather than running away from them. I use songwriting as a way of activating memories through music. The deceptive nature of memory feels like a “fun house'' to me. That’s why the album title felt really fitting. I allowed myself to walk through these rooms of memory and take a look around.
On “Aquamarine,” “Clean Air,” and “More Than Love,” I wanted to bring a lightness and understanding to other people's experiences with navigating their own pain. I’m trying to be more compassionate and understanding — it’s inner child work. Everybody is fighting their own battles and I tried to remember that rather than writing revenge songs. On Placeholder, I was doing a lot of blaming and feeling guilty about it. For this record, I realized that I'm not terminally unique in my pain.
How was working with Michael Hadreas of Perfume Genius on your duet “Just To Hear You?”
Sasami [Ashworth] wrote the duet portion with him in mind. I was really nervous to ask him because I play in his band, and I have a hard time asking people for help. Singing with Mike on tour has made me a better singer because I had to learn his diverse harmonies. I feel like I've been so inspired just by learning all of his music and spending so much time with it. Talk about taking up all the rooms — he captures the room.
Your songwriting is incredibly intimate, but it’s also very impressionistic. How do you navigate the personal without being too literal?
What is too literal? In the context of songwriting and art, everything feels exaggerated, even when I don’t realize I’m doing it. I'm a Pisces and I talked to a lot of my Piscean friends about this thing that happens: Sometimes I feel like I am being very literal, but actually, I'm describing a cloud, or I'm speaking in code. In my mind the lyric, “I'm two trees, one bearing fruit, one shedding leaves,” is so obvious to me, but only two people in my life would know it’s literal. On the other hand, it's also metaphoric. Songwriting feels like a really safe place to do that, because it's not a conversation with another person where I need to know that they're understanding me or that we're understanding each other.
Do you think your queer identity lends itself to musical experimentation?
I don't usually talk about that too much in interviews because it's about the music for me. But I could never separate my experiences as a trans nonbinary person from my music, because it's my music and that's who I am, so it never could be separated. This record feels really nonbinary. It feels really trans in a way to me that my previous records weren't. I was not there yet. I hadn't started transitioning yet. I hadn't started identifying.
I'm constantly changing. Especially having a trans identity, my physical body is changing. With Fun House, I wanted to explore these parts a little bit more, including my transness. I love allowing myself to [take] up space of my own identity in a different way. Entering these rooms of my personality that I might've only entered in fantasy.
What was it like having your close friend, Sasami Ashworth, produce your record?
As a friend, she sees all these different sides of me. She wanted to help me make a record that was representative of all of me, not just an overly simplified version of myself due to my own fears. She said, "Look at all these rooms you can go into.” Sasami really helped me create an energetic, uplifting contrast between the intensity of the lyrics and the music. I told her I couldn’t write a pop song, and she said, "Why not? You can sing it. You wrote the song.” She created such a safe place to take a calculated risk, it was so monumental.
There were a couple of moments I remember really resisting the ideas she was having. I was like, "This is not Hand Habits." She said, "Do you really not like it or is it just uncomfortable?" I was just uncomfortable because I had never allowed myself to go there before. Sasami’s production expanded upon what I think Hand Habits could be. It still really feels like me, but I was initially worried about losing that. I would ask myself, “Is this getting too far away from what my identity is?” But in reality, identity is so vapor. It's so anamorph, and it can be anything.
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