Blue Skies – Dehd • '22 Staff Picks
Anyone who has experienced a Chicago spring can attest to the blissful pandemonium that ensues every year. Business hours are fudged to make rooftop happy hours, pasty thighs and stomachs are brandished along the lakefront, and classes are skipped to soak up the warmth that already seems to be slouching into next winter. It returns every year, like an old friend, eradicating all memory of wind and ice with its first sunny breaths.
Dehd’s Blue Skies, released in May 2022, was the ideal soundtrack to a Chicago spring. For 32 minutes, Dehd do what they do best: deliver earworms with punk sensibilities and indie rock execution. The combination of Jason Balla’s surfy guitar, Emily Kempf’s infectious melodies, and Eric McGrady’s restrained drums begs to be enjoyed with a spliff on the beach. Even the record’s title and cover art—a whimsical collage of a butterfly—reference something Chicagoans associate with balmy ecstasy: blue skies.
But regardless of what unseasonable warmth may have been gracing Chicago last spring, the sky appeared to me a persistent, gray wasteland. In the last week of May, I lost what I thought was my dream job and I ended a years-long, tumultuous relationship. So as my peers flocked to the sands of Hollywood beach, I stayed holed up in my apartment listening and re-listening to the music that carried me through the final laps of my relationship.
It wasn’t long before Spotify decided that my masochistic listening habits had to end and suggested Blue Skies under new releases. I regarded it with vague intrigue—I had been following Dehd for years and was a big fan of 2020’s Flower of Devotion—and then with contempt—the cover art mocked me with joyful naivety. But that butterfly persisted on my Spotify home screen day after day until the algorithm finally won and I decided to give the album a listen.
Blue Skies opened with an eerie synth swell on “Control,” as if whatever came before the record was horrifying and I was only hearing the tail end. There was silence, and then Balla’s voice broke through: “Because it only takes a minute / Yea I start off fine but then I’m in it / I feel the fever in my head start to take its hold / Need you here the most / I'm outta control.” The sheer knowledge that someone could feel as overwhelmed as I did in that moment caused me to sob.
“Bad Love” subsequently knocked the wind out of me, not only because its lyrics shared an uncanny likeness with my situation, but because its jaunty beat and verbed-out chorus got me excited about music in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. Hovering somewhere in the realm of Ronettes-meet-Velvet Underground-meets modern indie, “Bad Love” is an upbeat track that says goodbye and fuck you to toxic relationships. It was exactly what I needed to get me off my ass and out of my apartment.
I popped in my headphones and played the rest of the record on a walk over to the lake. I listened to the raucous “Bop”—quite literally a bop—while allowing the sun to melt my pity party. Indeed, it was one of those spring days that beckons everyone outside. I pretended I was in a music video, bouncing along to “Hold” with the dog walkers and runners. By the time I arrived at the lake, I felt thoroughly rejuvenated.
I continued to revisit Blue Skies over the coming weeks and months. “Empty in My Mind” quickly emerged as my favorite track—I felt myself being uplifted with each smack of the snare, and the pre-chorus supplied me with a bout of dopamine in the way that only a perfect pop chord progression can. Even as Blue Skies eventually appeared less in my music rotation, I regarded it as a record that helped me regain my sense of self.
While revisiting Blue Skies for this write-up, I came across an article where Balla discusses how “Stars,” the record’s penultimate track and Dehd’s most serious foray into glam, is about taking a walk to ease his mind. I’m not one to believe in the clandestine, but I did find the serendipity to be beautiful.
To me, this record is about finding beauty in the everyday and in oneself. It’d be ridiculous to believe that a single record relieved me of depression and reinstilled my self-confidence. But something about Blue Skies helped reawaken a part of myself I thought had been beaten out of me; it helped me find peace in the familiar embrace of a Chicago spring.