Name: Placeholder
Brand: Hand Habits

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

LBJ291LP

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Black vinyl with Printed Inner Sleeve and Download.

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2020-05-28

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

648401029116

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1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Hand Habits

Genre GB

Singer Songwriter

Label GB

Saddle Creek

Hand Habits is the solo project of Meg Duffy who has recorded with the likes of The War on Drugs, Weyes Blood, and Amber Arcades (to name a few) while also having played in Mega Bog and Kevin Morby’s band. Paceholder, her second album is a full band affair and is a cleaner and more focused release that is still rich in sound and totally intimate.

Meg Duffy grew up in a small town in Upstate New York and they cut their teeth as a session guitarist and touring member of Kevin Morby’s band. The Hand Habits project emerged after Meg moved to Los Angeles; it started as a private songwriting outlet but soon evolved into a fully-fledged band with Meg at the helm. Hand Habits’ debut album, Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void), was released by Woodsist Records in 2017. The LP was entirely self-produced and recorded in Meg’s home during spare moments when they weren’t touring. Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void) is a lush, homespun collection of folk songs that found Meg in an exploratory state as an artist moving out on their own for the first time.

Two years later, Hand Habits has returned with their sophomore album, placeholder. To make this album, Meg chose to work in a studio and bring in collaborators, entrusting them with what had previously been a very personal creative process. Over the course of 12 tracks, Meg emerges with new confidence as both a bandleader and singer. This album is as tender and immediate as anything Meg’s ever written, but it’s also intensely focused and refined, the work of a meticulous musician ready to share their singular vision with the world.

The name placeholder stems from Meg’s fascination with the undefinable. Their songs serve as openings - carved-out spaces waiting to be endowed with meaning. As a lyricist, Meg is drawn to the in-between, and the songs on this new album primarily confront the ways in which certain experiences can serve as a stepping stone on the road to self-discovery. “A big aspect of my songwriting and the way I move through the world depends on my relationships with people. The songs on placeholder are about accountability and forgiveness,” Meg says. “These are all real stories. I don’t fictionalize much.”

Meg describes these songs as their most direct to date, crafted with clear intention, and unlike Wildly Humble (Idle Before The Void), placeholder doesn’t meander. “It’s less of a submerged landscape and more a concise series of thoughts,” Meg explains. Instrumentally, placeholder can be situated alongside some of Meg’s folk-adjacent contemporaries like Angel Olsen or Big Thief, and the guitar work on this album proves that Meg continues to be one of the finest young musicians working today. placeholder is another entry in the Hand Habits songbook, but it’s also a valuable testament of our time. While placeholder inspires a sense of ease, simple questions rarely beget easy answers and Meg honours the indescribable joy and profound sorrow that comes with figuring things out, one step at a time. For fans of Big Thief, Angel Olsen, Sparklehorse and Gram Parsons.

LP - Black Vinyl with Printed Inner Sleeve and Download.

LP+ - Limited to 250 Copies on Olive Green and Clear Colour-in-Colour Vinyl with Printed Inner Sleeve and Download. We only have a handful of this Saddle Creek Label Exclusive.