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DEHD has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 per ticket goes to supporting organizations working for equity, access, and dignity for all. www.plus1.orgCigarettes burn in the moonlight. Necklaces bang against bare chests. And on their triumphant fifth album Poetry, Dehd transports us to a world steeped in imagery. Its a world painted in the sunset tones of summer romance and flickering old flames. Its motorcycle chrome (Mood Ring), its fake Gucci Sunglasses (Dog Days), and its shaking hands before a swaying lover (Hard to Love).Across fourteen songs, the trioJason Balla, Emily Kempf, and Eric McGradythrow themselves against the question of what it means to hope, knowing all too well that things end and hearts can break. You cant beat death, but you can beat death in life, wrote Charles Bukowski and upon listening to this album its obvious the band has chosen to attempt the latter. After hitting a stride with their 2020 breakout record Flower of Devotion, followed by their radiant Fat Possum debut Blue Skies in 2022, Dehd did something different. They turned a writing session into a road trip.With a van full of recording equipment they headed to Kempfs off-grid Earthship in New Mexico where they chopped wood to keep warm and worked for as long as the solar panels held a charge. They then traveled north to a borrowed cabin surrounded by the chilly waters of the Puget Sound, where the hours were marked only by the movement of the tide. On the way back to Chicago for their final writing session at the warehouse theyve called home for over a decade, Balla and McGrady became stranded for days in rural Montana after hitting a deer and abandoning their van. This tireless sense of adventure, both internal and external, has become a trademark of Dehd over the years. Eating, sleeping, breathingour only purpose was to write, Kempf recalled. And it seems in this place of quiet focus Dehd have achieved their most honest and vulnerable writing yet.In the studio they tapped Ziyad Asrar (of Whitney) to co-produce alongside Balla, marking their first time collaborating with someone outside of the band for the recording process. With the addition of Asrar the emotional landscape of the record is vividly rendered, at times confessional and others anthemic, vocals bared, up front with the confidence of a band that knows the power of their words.No one writes about love quite like Dehd, and on Poetry, they somehow make even heartbreak sound inviting. In the swirl of budding new relationships and lingering breakups, their lyrics find themselves at once exalting love and then turning to doubt it. Examining their own self-defeating habits. I let myself get in the way, turning every thought to jealousy, admits Balla on Light On, But was it worth losing a home?
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