Duffy’s devout fans will recognize their signature intimacy, artistry, and technical expertise in Sugar the Bruise. But they will also encounter an artist questioning what it means to be in control.

Do we write songs or do songs write us? The same could be asked of poems, of books, of whole lives. All artists realise sooner or later that choice is elusive, will is illusory. We grasp for certainty, we write towards resolution, only to learn again and again that as soon as we think we’ve arrived, these destinations prove themselves to be mirages.

This lesson holds for all people, too. And, yet, we laugh along the way, we fall in love, we make meaning, and we play. Sugar the Bruise is your companion in the void, your friend at the end, a reminder that, in the immediacy of loss, something beautiful has already begun.

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