Hand Habits Stops by SOhO for ‘Sugar the Bruise’

Since being dubbed “your favorite indie rocker’s favorite guitarist” by Pitchfork in 2019, Meg Duffy has proven they’re so much more. While they still play guitar for other artists’ projects — including recently touring with Perfume Genius — Duffy has poured just as much passion into their solo project, Hand Habits. 

Last Friday, June 16, on the release day of Hand Habits’ newest record, Sugar the Bruise, I had the pleasure of speaking with Duffy ahead of their Friday, June 23 show at SOhO. 

Though it’s just six tracks and 20 minutes long, Sugar the Bruise feels like a fully fleshed record. Duffy tells me it came about after teaching a month-long songwriting class that moved them to push outside their comfort zone. Taking inspiration from the likes of Frank Ocean and Björk, Duffy ended up with a more textural, processed sound. 

“With this whole record, I went into it feeling a lot more light and just wanting to have fun and experiment,” they said. “It’s been kind of refreshing, in a way, because there’s such playfulness as the fulcrum … of the record.”

The lyrics are less personal than on their previous albums, but for Duffy, that doesn’t mean they’re any less intentional.

“One of my emotional goals was, ‘Well, what happen[s] if I didn’t dredge up everything that was painful over the last year and a half and write songs about it, and what if I wrote songs about some other things?’ And I actually found that harder,” Duffy said. “The tether isn’t as strong, so I had to tap into these different parts of my intuition.”

Following one of the songwriting class’s prompts to write about a moving piece of art, Duffy wrote “The Bust of Nefertiti,” about the sculpture’s simultaneous, conflicting symbolism of both beauty and colonialism. After just one listen, it quickly became one of my favorites.

Duffy sings, “Weeping at the symbols, your knees cold upon the tile / As a golden disc of sunlight seemed to circle you entirely / And so you ask the question, why is she in Germany?” 

There is a certain playfulness with the meta-songwriting of “Gift of the Human Curse” and “Andy in Stereo,” both of which talk about perhaps fictional people creating music. But Duffy is more than happy to leave that all up to interpretation. 

Duffy is well-toured as a musician, having played venues big and small across the country in group and solo gigs. The feeling of being up on stage, however, is still something they haven’t gotten used to.

“It’s, like, the most psychedelic thing. It’s the weirdest thing humans do, I think, to put on a performance,” they said. “I mean, it’s amazing, but it’s just very strange, and I can’t think about it too much when I’m doing it, because I’ll freak out.”

Duffy will return to the SOhO stage on Friday for the second time after their last visit nearly two years ago, accompanied by Perfume Genius bandmate Greg Uhlmann. It’s sure to be a treat for any indie rock fan, or any music fan, period.

Tickets for the show can be found here.