This is what you love to see, an already wonderful artist pushing themselves to try something different. For writers, there’s a line of advice that goes something like, “Write the book that you want to read,” and Hand Habits’ “Fun House” is Meg Duffy making the kind of album that they wanted to listen to.
In this piece on Fader and this great interview with Larry Fitzmaurice, Duffy talks about how Sasami, who produced the record, helped them explore new sounds and different parts of their identity through the music on the album. Like other Hand Habits albums, “Fun House” has a lot of stone-cold beautiful folk songs, like “False Start,” “Graves,” “No Difference,” and “The Answer,” but it also has the scene-setting heavy synth jam in “More Than Love,” the stunningly romantic “Clean Air,” which includes fun, borderline cheesy percussion and bass flourishes that give it a mid-80s vibe, and “Concrete & Feathers,” a straight-up Crazy Horse-style ripper, opening with bright, interlocking riffs.
Listening to “Fun House” made me think of the old Isaiah Berlin “fox and hedgehog” categorization of artists and thinkers (the basic gist is that “foxes” think of the world and perceive the world through a wide variety of experiences and ideas, and “hedgehogs” understand the world through a single framework). “Fun House” is a foxy record, in that Duffy is reflecting upon their experiences and emotions and seeking to understand (and convey) those reflections through different types of songs. From interviews, it sounds like Duffy was looking for a way to break free of the mode they know best and take a risk at expressing themself in a new and maybe more personal way.
“Aquamarine,” for example, is way out there for Duffy. A danceable, clockwork synth workout during which Duffy chronicles some heavy shit: “why can’t you talk about it/I got used to being on the other side of truth/maybe it’s too painful and that’s why you’re so unable/a little bit of her inside/everything I do/everything I do.” Like a narrative of a family reckoning set to bouncy Junior Boys synth sounds.
“No Difference,” as mentioned above, sounds like folk at the start, but then blossoms into something else. Duffy starts the track singing, “There is no difference between the two/between losing and finding you,” and then they’re joined by a chorus of other voices (including Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius) in a sighing “oh oh oh.” One of the other things of note about the record is the vocals—so many songs feature Duffy doubling their vocals, or joined by Sasami or Hadreas or others in beautiful, lush vocal arrangements. Halfway through “No Difference” a keyboard sounds a repeating figure, then drops out again. Duffy ends the song with 40 seconds of pure, exhilarating music, a gorgeous little filigree to tie it all up.
What an album.