Hand Habits – ‘Blue Reminder’ album review: embodying hope in hard times
“Didn’t want to give in to my fears,” Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy begins the heartfelt opening track on Blue Reminder.
And that’s also the moment the record title begins to make complete sense. The harsh reality, or the brutal truth, of being a human being in today’s landscape isn’t necessarily a new theme in the current musical landscape. But here, in the peak of Duffy’s vulnerable expression, it feels particularly important.
Living life to the fullest is one of the emptiest clichés of all time, but here it means feeling deeply, even when it hurts like hell. Especially when it hurts like hell. Because, in the contexts of Blue Reminder, where Duffy airs all aspects of their existence, from having hope to navigating the perils of modern society and anti-trans or anti-queer sentiments, it’s hard to feel it all. But the moment you do – when you really let it in and let yourself be sad, or angry – that’s when you let in the light, too.
Everywhere on the record, there’s despair. There’s disdain. There’s frustration and bitterness. But these are also outweighed by Duffy’s tender ruminations and how they spotlight the beauty of yearning, of simply feeling or needing the pain to feel joy and happiness. Or when it’s not quite that cut and dry, it shows a version of Duffy that’s well aware that you can’t have one without the other – you can’t have happiness without sadness – and that’s the sweet spot that truly tells you you’ve started living.
But with talking about life’s ambiguities, there’s always a temptation (or a natural gravitation towards) being vague. It’s natural to revert to the poetry of multiple meanings to get any sort of point across, especially when there are multiple. But while there’s a bit of that across Blue Reminder – done in such an effortless way, at that – some of the record’s best tracks are anything but aimless.
The title track, for instance, sees Duffy uttering the hard-hitting line: “Will you take me as I am? /Oscillating between a woman, a child / And a broken man.” Next, they say if their muse stays with them, they’ll let them “meet all three”. It’s powerful not because it’s so there and in your face as Duffy leaves you behind to ponder exactly what it all meant, but because its exact meaning is so immediate, leaving no room for anything else.
But these moments are also balanced out by Duffy’s more upbeat musings, like ‘Jasmine Blossoms’, even though there’s still that subtle melancholy beneath the surface. While the record is far from a concept album, its cohesion plays out like the emotions you might experience through any given day. Where ‘Bluebird of Happiness’ (which is also somehow delightfully reminiscent of The Beach Boys) represents the sunlight at the crack of dawn, ‘Nubble’ comes in almost like that late-morning lamentation where things dust off enough for you to catch up with yourself.
Others have that familiar softness of sunset, or late-afternoon deliberation of what’s good and what’s not so good in a life filled with constant second-guessing. But all of that brings home the scattered nature of existing in a world so broken when you feel broken inside, too. “When I reflect on how society can punish or cruelly imply a brokenness to anyone who lives in the margins of a limited range of what they consider normal, or imply they are the way they are because of a defect or illness, it’s hard not to internalise some of this way of thinking,” says Duffy.
As such, Blue Reminder is both Duffy navigating living as “the truest version” of themself and learning, maybe for the first time, how to be passionate and loving in a way that doesn’t shun the world’s darkness but presses on in spite of it. “Even though we are living a nightmare right now in a lot of ways,” Duffy says, “this record is about living the dream. It’s a reminder that the dream is possible.”
Defining track: ‘Bluebird of Happiness’ – the way it builds, sonically and emotionally, captures everything the record set out to achieve; existing somewhere between hope and despair.
For fans of: Big Thief with a bit of LA mixed in.
A concluding comment about hope, from ‘Bluebird of Happiness’: “All the feathers you’ve outgrown / All the winds that kept you away from home / All the shiny things you used to know / They are treasures.”
Release date: August 22nd, 2025 | Producer: Meg Duffy and Joseph Lorge | Label: Fat Possum
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