Dehd Water CD

Love is everyday magic. That's the impression you get listening to Water, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. Veterans of Chicagos 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 were made of. It takes the shape of it's 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 Undergrounds Loaded and the breezy melodicism of C86-era indie rock, with a dash of the Cramps spooky-hop bop courtesy of McGradys 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.