Love is everyday magic. That’s the impression you get listening to Water, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. Veterans of Chicago’s increasingly fruitful DIY scene Jason Balla ( Ne-Hi and Earring) Emily Kempf (Vail and formerly with Lala Lala) and drummer Eric McGrady share a strange and inexplicable chemistry. Love rises up into the atmosphere like steam off a summer sidewalk and makes you wild. Love breaks your heart and you consider yourself lucky for it. Like water itself, it surrounds us, it supports us; it’s what we’re made of. It takes the shape of its container. The music is hazy and reverb-drenched, a scuzzy and hyped-up take on surf rock that could only come from the Third Coast. It’s all animated by the red-lining feel-good spirit of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded and the breezy melodicism of C86-era indie rock, with a dash of the Cramps’ spooky-hop bop courtesy of McGrady’s locomotive drumming.It’s a clear-eyed look at the wild nature of everyday life that’s been spun up in sugary sweet melodies and scratched-crystal sounds. More than anything, it’s the embodiment of Dehd’s m.o. from the start: As Kempf puts it, “Work with what you have and make it magical.”

After years side-manning for Long Island, Virginia and New York City’s finest undiscovered songwriters (D.B.B. Plays Cups, the Monte de Rosas Band, Andrea Schiavelli’s Eyes of Love) and contributing crisp basswork to the indomitable Brooklyn band Rips, the songwriter Gary Canino, submits to you a generous collection of country-inflected music under the Dark Tea moniker that, as the quotes from other Garys illustrate, honors the past while looking ahead. There is, as they say, a little something for everyone. 

With Dark Tea, Gary emerges years later as a scientist does from her lab, having cracked the formula. The formula? Honor the listeners’ desire for both danger and comfort. And so, when a melody starts to wander from the marked trail, Gary soothes the listener’s ear with a simple one-four (“Variable Reward”). And so, when ambling verse figure disorients the listener, it repeats until she feels at home in it (“The Bird’s Nest”). And so, a long verse finds punctuation in a tastefully punchy chorus (“No Notifications”). The album also contains no fewer than three truly great guitar solos, including one from Meg Duffy’s Hand Habits on “Rollin’ Back The Dial”.

In closing, I offer three exemplary lyrics from the record to demonstrate that Gary has surveyed the mountain of good taste, climbed it, and now sinks the Dark Tea flag into its peak.

-forward by Andrew Cedermark

Mixed by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control).

1st Pressing
300 Black VInyl

Inspired by classic British post-punk, the songwriting of Cate LeBon, and the close-knit Brooklyn DIY community from which the band first sprouted, Patio now release their long-awaited debut full-length Essentials, a fundamental collection of new music for 2019. Building upon the delicacy of the band’s prior work, Essentials presents fuller sounds, heightened emotions, and grander thematic complexity. Its 10 tracks are dark and introspective, yet hopeful, and often humorous—from rambling spoken word meditations to sparkling melodies and soaring riffs. Melodramatic and grotesque expressions abound, as do soft, subtle moments of quiet self-examination. Mixed by Amar Lal (Big Ups, Ovlov) and mastered by Sarah Register (Protmartyr, US Girls)