Hand Habits’ debut LP, Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void), evokes a striking image, that of submitting oneself to an expansive unknown with arms outstretched. It’s a feeling Meg Duffy, the singer-songwriter behind this project, knows well; the upstate New York native once packed up everything and moved to Los Angeles to become the guitarist for Kevin Morby. Before that, she’d experimented as Hand Habits around the Albany D.I.Y. scene and, in 2014, released Small Shifts, a 10-inch split with Avi Buffalo’s Sheridan Riley.
It is with an earthly reverence that Duffy attends to her music. When Duffy plays with Morby, she’s a calm and grounded presence, shredding with natural ease, often with eyes closed. Here, her meditations are never rushed and the record rumbles along patiently. Duffy recorded Wildly Idle herself between the Catskills and Los Angeles with assistance from Riley, Quilt’s Keven Lareau, and M. Geddes Gengras. Rather than feeling pigeonholed by the sonic stereotypes of either locale (woodsy vs. hi-fi), Wildly Idle sounds birthed from exploration and experimentation.
Like her main influences, Grouper and Phil Elverum, Duffy understands that songs are “evolving, living things,” as the latter musician once said. One gets the sense that Duffy’s songs are so thoroughly composed that they could fly off on their own. “Actress” is overflowing with minutiae like the shaking of maracas, gentle guitars, and a moment when all these fizz into dissolution. “Now isn’t it just like me?/I’m cracking up out of the blue,” she asks after this break, with a hint of levity. Indeed, on Wildly Idle, Duffy displays a joy in opening herself up. Part of submission is admitting one’s own vulnerability and reliance on the intangible, which Duffy does many times here. “I don’t want no one else/It’s better to believe in something/Bigger than ourselves,” she sings on opener “Flower Glass.”
Three poems (“scenes,” per Duffy), are scattered throughout the record and are read by their authors: Kayla Ephros, Catherine Pond, and Lucy Blagg. Beneath their distorted voices, Duffy warps her instruments into haunting, ethereal atmospheres. Each poem purposefully addresses one of the motifs Duffy confronts on Wildly Idle: “Greater LA” probes the metropolis’ inherent despair, “Cowboy” subverts gender roles, and “Time Hole” questions the rapid pace of contemporary life. Like Jenny Hval’s collaborations with writer Annie Bielski, these additions work to minimize the distinction between poetry and song.
Listening to Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void) reminds me of a line from Eve Babitz’s collection Slow Days, Fast Company: “I’ve been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I’ve loved and the ideas I’ve embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.” Duffy sings of romances come and gone without ever sounding jaded or spiteful; future love promises a mystery, a sensuality that’s open like the road. “I just wanna be a bad boy/Baby in your arms tonight,” she murmurs at one point, with an Elvis-like softness. There’s a hope here that the unknown contains more positivities than anxieties. The final words on the album are “I’m gonna grow,” and there’s every reason to believe it’s a promise Duffy will keep.
