Dehd

with Gustaf

Doors 7 p.m. | Show 8 p.m. | 18+

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Dehd

Upon arrival during the fraught summer of 2020, Flower of Devotion felt like Dehd’s necessary prescription for us all. That was, of course, a moment of unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty, when just contemplating the future could seem overly optimistic. But Dehd captured and shared the precarious balance between real life and real hope, a feat mirrored by instant pop melodies and infectious punk energy. The Chicago trio had the audacity to look ahead when many of us didn’t, to imagine improvement through mere existence. It was an album we needed. We need its follow-up, the triumphant Blue Skies, even more.

Dehd’s fourth album (and first for Fat Possum) is also the band’s second consecutive breakthrough, loaded with the most compelling, compulsive, and expansive songs of their career. Blue Skies offers another jolt of timely hope, only with twice the power. These 13 hits feel like flashlights in the dark, acknowledging how difficult everything from love and sex to living and dying can be while supplying the inspiration of their own experiences. “There’s a hole in my window/I was wondering how the rain was getting in,” Emily Kempf sings during the magnetic “Window,” acknowledging the problem before jubilantly exclaiming she’s moving toward something new. “Blue skies!”

The rapturous reception of Flower of Devotion gave Dehd access to more resources — budgets, studios, producers. Rather than seek something new, however, they invested in themselves, their process, and their deep belief in what they have always done. They booked the same studio where they had recorded Flower of Devotion but tripled their stay, giving themselves time to play with arrangements and delight in a wonderland of drum machines and synthesizers.

Through Dehd’s career, Jason Balla has been building his chops as a producer, so this was a chance to indulge and explore. Eric McGrady, meanwhile, considered how much more he could deliver as a drummer, adding layers to the thump of his past. And Emily, who admits that the process of making records has always been emotionally draining, focused on harnessing her indomitable energy, funneling her power into these songs without being overpowered by them. Dehd gave themselves runway to make mistakes and the space to make a statement. Blue Skies is their poignant, redemptive, and deeply fun testament to trusting and pushing yourself.

These 33 minutes run like a series of interconnected singles, each song so hooky and strong that you’ll be hard-pressed to name a favorite. The triumphant “Bad Love” is a surge of self-liberation, Emily leading the charge through an anthem about admitting your faults, seeking forgiveness, and finding a way forward. “I got a heart full/I got a heart full of redemption,” she offers at the start, a moment that suggests Springsteen writing with The Go-Go’s. A Tom Verlaine quiver to his voice, Jason takes a nighttime walk in the city as anxiety closes in during the irrepressible “Stars,” calming himself with a concrete reminder he’s still here. And there’s Eric’s splendid “Hold,” a chiming wonder with elastic bass lines and cascading piano parts that interlock beneath his hypnotic voice. He affirms the impact of simple acts of love.

But even when they sound ebullient, Dehd has never shied from troubles, the balance that has made them so magnetic. Above wafting synths and marching drum machines, “Memories” feels first like an electro dirge, memorializing lost friends. Such moments — and there are several clouds amid these Blue Skies — are pointed signals of our collective woe. Dehd presses ahead, though, into a future that offers something else if not always something better. What hope, after all, is more dependable? They end “Memories” in a refrain of pure persistence: “I’m doing all I can.” Blue Skies gets real. Blue Skies never wallows.

Toward the end of 2021, Dehd shared stages with Julien Baker, their first substantive chance to take Flower of Devotion on the road. Every night after their set, fans would tell the band how those songs had helped during the toughest times of the last two years. Those listeners had recognized what makes Emily, Jason, and Eric so compelling — they put their individual experiences on the page, then project them together with heart and empathy into instant hooks. Those post-show admissions could be a lot to process for the band, but they provided galvanizing confirmations that they’d made the right decision with Blue Skies. They would keep pulling light out of the dark with songs that feel so fucking good to hear right now.

The writing is sharper and smarter on Blue Skies. The harmonies and rhythms are more sophisticated and considered. The moods are deeper, the swings between them more inspiring. But this is still Dehd, just more wild and wonderful than ever before. “This is all we get,” Emily shouts with relish on the record’s last lines, during a song about the ways geologic deep time should free us all to live more. “Best to take the risk.” Heard, loud and clear.

Gustaf

Inspired by the rhythmic grooves of ESG, the dopey drawl of Jonathan Richman, and manic energy of The Fall, Gustaf’s live set is quick on its feet, constantly in flux, and obsessively catered to the people in the room, resulting in a sound that is emotive, androgynous, and infectiously danceable.

Comprised of Tine Hill (bass), Vram Kherlopian (guitar), Melissa Lucciola (drums), Tarra Thiessen (vocals, percussion), and Lydia Gammill (lead vocals), Gustaf got its start in 2018 when Thiessen recruited Gammill to help drive her van down to SXSW.  When Thiessen’s original tour fell through, Gammill suggested pulling a band together to play in their place. With little more than a name and a handful of t-shirts, they hit the ground running, playing hundreds of shows in their first two years and earning a reputation as one of New York’s “hardest working…and most reliably fun bands” (Brooklyn Vegan).

Finding early champions in all quarters, they caught the attention of luminaries like Beck and Matt Shultz of Cage the Elephant – who had the band open for him at a secret loft party – and secured opening slots for buzzing indie acts like Omni, Tropical Fuck Storm, Dehd and New York no wave legends like James Chance and Martin Revv without any recordings to their name. They quickly earned acclaim from outlets such as Oh My Rockness, who touted,  “Listen, if Gustaf is playing a late night basement show somewhere, or on a rickety roof, or in someone’s shitty apartment, or just at some regular old music venue…you should make all the necessary arrangements and go.”

Gustaf’s debut full-length album, Audio Drag For Ego Slobs, released October 1, 2021 on Royal Mountain Records (Wild Pink, Alvvays, U.S. Girls), is a culmination of lessons learned on the stage and in the studio. The album is a collection of anxious affirmations, existential dread, and blind joy. Recorded at the Honey Jar Studio in Brooklyn with Carlos Hernandez (Ava Luna, Sneaks, Mr. Twin Sister) and co-produced by Hernandez and Gammill, it follows last year’s Mine 7-inch, the band’s first recorded material and a release that immediately garnered attention from outlets like NME and NPR who dubbed the band one of 2021’s emerging artists, as well as BBC 6 Music who added the release to regular rotation.

Both tense and loose, fluid yet uptight, Audio Drag For Ego Slobs sounds simultaneously like nothing you’ve ever heard before while channeling the spirit and energy of the old New York scene. Feeling like a cramped and secret house party, buzzing with kinetic energy and bristling with spirit, the title is a tongue-in-cheek play on classic compilation albums such as “relaxing tunes for an enchanting evening”. Lifted from the avant-garde multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, “Audio Drag” refers to Thiessen’s deepened pitch shifting voice filter, while “Ego Slob” is a self-coined phrase to describe someone who does a sloppy job of translating the outside world within the context of themself.

That “sloppy” ego slob spirit translates to the album’s controlled chaos, bursting at the seams—a performance of hyperbole and cathartic emotional gluttony, sonically winking at the listener lest you take them too seriously. Gammill’s swaggering half-spoken vocal melodies pierce through the album’s central bass groove, bleating guitars and restless drums.

After a year away from the stage, the band is eager to flex their muscles once more as a live act with plans to open for IDLES across the United States in October, as well as Pillow Queens in the United Kingdom in November, and prove why Brooklyn Vegan once said, “There are a lot of bands making arty post-punk, but very few who have a front person as magnetic, funny, and occasionally, scary as Gustaf’s Lydia Gammill.”