Concert Review: Hand Habits Makes Sure Baby’s All Right Is Alright
It is pretty obvious that I am in love with Hand Habits. I reviewed her album,Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void), and am still in awe of its inexplicable beauty. There are people who write music that makes you grow as a person while showing you what is personal growth. With arrangements that feel like they could soundtrack a Wes Anderson film, Hand Habits made Baby’s All Right feel exactly that: alright.
There is something beautiful in being alright. It may be a diminished sentiment when compared to feeling happy, but that is a fleeting emotion. Being alright is about the consistency of goodness, while happiness is about its heightening or escalated instances. In Hand Habits, Wildly Idle (Humble Before The Void), she discusses the spiritual, physical, and mental search every person has when they try to settle on an inner foundation of goodness that never breaks. This seems like an impossible feat of which many times you will actually break and struggle to repair yourself to rebuild yourself. Hence, songs like “Flower Glass”, “Book On How To Change”, and “New Bones” leap out to me both on record and live because they speak so much to what is happening to youth today and forever. Brooklyn was the perfect spot to hold Hand Habits performance because it is filled with young people, especially artists, trying to stay connected in order to be the creators they wish to be. Having an album that speaks to how idle your wildness can be if it feels untapped or undiscovered spoke to the crowd of young Brooklynites, who felt hushed by the winding guitar melodies and the higher ranged/Nico-esque psychedelia of Hand Habits.
If you do not know Nico, please buy a Velvet Underground album NOW. She like, Hand Habits, has a mindful voice that makes you feel like you are walking through every aspect of nature: from human to environmental. That ability to not simply transport but drift people slowly like drizzling rain unto a mental designation made Hand Habits quietly captivating. Again, her new album is not a loud, rock n’roll anthem, which is what elevated her Friday night show. Here we all were, young on a Friday, letting down emotional guards when the weekends are supposed to be about forgetting they even exist inside of us. Hence, you know someone is really good when they turn a night meant to party into one meant to think. Yet, Hand Habits is worth thinking with because of precisely she captures the good and bad nuances of humanity. Whether she is standing by the microphone looking down at her guitar stings like they were a newborn seeing life for the first time, or just sitting staring at the audience like they were the Green Lighthouse from the Great Gatsby, you got the sense that this was a woman filled with wonder or, at least, the insatiable appetite to feel wonderful. Such a sentiment is understandable, especially, when all know what it is like to feel Wildly Idle. For More Information Click Here.
