An interview with DIIV

The band discuss their new album, 'Frog In Boiling Water', becoming a democracy, babysitting, vinyl variants, podcasting, and the (mis)pronunciation of a certain doomgaze band’s name.

When DIIV first emerged in 2011, I was already deeply in love with the label that signed them, Captured Tracks. The Brooklyn-based label’s roster was near-perfect in delivering the music I was longing for: jangly C86-homage indie pop and gritty, lo-fi post-punk. There was Dum Dum Girls, Wild Nothing, Craft Spells, Minks, Little Girls, The Soft Moon, The Girls At Dawn, as well as label owner Mike Sniper’s own projects Blank Dogs and The Mayfair Set. I couldn’t get enough. But when I first heard DIIV’s debut single “Sometime,” (released under their original name of Dive) I knew they were different from the rest of the CT pack. 

Founded by Zachary Cole Smith, who first cut his teeth drumming and playing guitar in Beach Fossils, DIIV’s debut album, 2012’s Oshin, was unquestionably a love-at-first-listen experience for me. I don’t normally see a band play more than once or twice during an album cycle, but I caught four DIIV gigs during the Oshin era. Even 12 years later that album still sounds fresh, with its misty reverb-soaked production and glinting guitar leads.

Unfortunately, Smith ran into some personal trouble in between albums that generated news headlines and overshadowed the band’s activity, which I touched on when we spoke in 2016 about DIIV’s second album, the double LP Is The Is Are. But I thought that despite those distractions, the band - which now featured all current members: guitarist Andrew Bailey, bassist Colin Caulfield and drummer Ben Newman - turned in a bulging yet satisfying follow-up that expanded their sound, introducing some Krautrock-inspired rhythms and arguably even more potent guitar riffs than its predecessor. 

Smith would finish a rehab stint for drug addiction, which supplied their third album, 2019’s Deceiver, with a darker, uneasy shift in lyrical tone and murkier, distorted guitars that channeled the pedal-happy sounds of shoegaze and grunge. In fact, it wasn’t until Deceiver that I noticed DIIV had begun to (unwittingly) enter the shoegaze fold, with Pitchfork flat out calling them a “shoegaze band” in its review.

After an almost five-year absence (which included their excellent unplugged Live at The Murmrr Theatre record, as well as reissues of their early singles and Oshin for its 10th anniversary), DIIV returns with their fourth album, Frog In Boiling Water, which references both the title and themes of “The Boiling Frog” from Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B. With many stops and starts, the band fully collaborated, resulting in a collection of slow-footed, hypnotic dirges that once again finds them flirting with shoegaze properties while discovering new sonic depths that will undoubtedly lead to something new and exciting in the future. The guys in DIIV were nice enough to waste some time talking to me about it.

So it’s been almost five years since Deceiver. I always wonder when there is an extended period between albums, does the artist experience time the same impatient way a fan does?

Andrew Bailey: It's probably different. I know, as a fan who has witnessed bands that I like take their time putting out records, you almost forget about it for a little while and then every once in a while, you're like, “Oh yeah, I wonder if they're gonna put out a record.” Whereas if you're the one making it, it's always on your mind and you have a better idea of when it's coming out too. But yeah, we definitely anticipated it a lot. 

Do you feel any urgency to release new music during the process of making it? Or are you okay with taking your time? 

Bailey: My checking account definitely wants me to [hurry up], because we don't make money while we're making the record. And so when it takes a really long time, that's just a bunch of time we're working without income. But other than that, I don't know, I feel like making a good album is more important than making a lot of shitty albums.

Zachary Cole Smith: Yeah, there are obviously parts of it we wish could be disposed of, like the massive amount of time it takes to manufacture vinyl and the fact that we don't have the money to just go record whenever we like. In terms of being a musician, I think it's a bit of a different era for how you can sustain yourself. We wouldn't be able to survive off of just making records and putting them out, even if that's what the only thing we wanted to be doing. There's so much other work that goes into keeping the band afloat, and so after we make a record our priority is to promote that record and tour on it, and then obviously we want to make another record. But there's just other stuff we have to do first, which I think is maybe not historically the case. You know, if you're Depeche Mode in 1980, you can just make a record and then make another one right away.

How did finishing this album compare to the feeling of finishing previous records?

Smith: It feels like it stretched on a little longer, but I don't know. I feel like we've always taken a long time, but this one did feel different. I'm not quite sure why I didn't really answer the question. 

Colin Caulfield: Looking back now to making Deceiver, it feels like we were kids. At the end it felt youthful and hopeful. I feel like Deceiver was efficiently recorded and finished for the most part, like the mixing kind of got a little drawn out, but in the grand scheme not all that much. Whereas I don't know as much about finishing Oshin, but Is The Is Are took a long time to get over the line. And then this one also took a really long time to get over the line. 

Bailey: We also didn't have a label this time, and so when we finished it, there was this feeling of, “All right, we made this cool thing. How much are we gonna get for it? What door will this open for us?” Whereas with Deceiver everybody knew that. 

Smith: Yeah, it was a unique challenge not having a label but with every record one of the things that makes it take a bit longer is just perfectionism. I think that we want to put out the best record we can, and if that means spending a couple more months on it, I think in every case of every single record, we made decisions to focus on making it the way we want, as opposed to just doing one round of mixing. That perfectionism, I think, takes over. 

You mentioned not having a label. Obviously you guys were on Captured Tracks for a long time and that's how I first discovered the band. How much did being free agents weigh on your mind while you're making this album? 

Ben Newman: We did have a couple false starts when we were looking for a label, and that especially weighed on us because we were basically done with the album at that point. That started to get really scary and stressful because we had already sunk everything into the album and we kind of thought it would just be this easy thing to get on a label. And there was a little bit of time where we were kind of scrambling there so it was a little scary at certain points. 

Smith: I think it also represented some type of optimism for the possibilities that maybe we could have elsewhere. So I think that while it was scary, there was also a bit more of the unknown in an exciting way too. Like a new infrastructure and just all the opportunities or freedom that can come along with that. 

To be honest, I don't think I knew of Fantasy before you had signed with them. It has an interesting roster full of artists that aren’t at all like DIIV. What led you to signing with them? 

Caulfield: Well, we had been talking with Loma Vista, which is also on Concord [parent label group]. Loma Vista and Fantasy are similar mechanisms or whatever. Even Loma Vista, which has more similar artists to us, also has a lot of artists that have nothing to do with the kind of music that we make. And I think, after the golden days of Captured Tracks, where it was so cohesive as a label, there was something appealing about going somewhere where we stood out. 

Smith: An early realization I had in navigating the music world or whatever was that all these labels just have people behind them. It really just came down to meeting the people at Concord and Fantasy, and really liking what they had to say, really liking ideas, really liking the freedom that they promised us and have followed through on. So it came down to just the people as opposed to the institution or the outward-facing view of it. 

Your bio makes it sound like the band was on the verge of ruin a year or so ago. What changed? 

Caulfield: I don't know if you've ever been in a romantic relationship where it seems like you're going to break up and then you just talk to each other. And that's all you had to do, or that was the thing that was really missing, was just communicating with each other. And then you end up dating either forever or for much longer, which has definitely happened to me a couple times. It felt similar for us in that we were just putting it off, in interest of trying to make the record as quickly as we could. All of the different pressures we've been talking about, like a professional, just show up and do the work and kind of put off problem solving or dealing with this conflict and stuff until later. And eventually we just had to talk and when we did it felt like a release of all this pent-up resentment and anxiety around all this different shit that was going on. It's not like it all got solved right there, but it definitely felt like the moment where it's not actually as bad as we think, we just have to talk to each other. 

The lyrics seem to reflect the shithole of a world we’re living in right now. Is it hard to focus on writing songs that are hopeful or optimistic when we’re constantly bombarded with heartbreaking and maddening news cycles?

Smith: Yeah, I think the record tries to tackle a little bit of that, like zooming out at big existential levels or micro-focusing on small, personal moments in your life. The record wants you to have meaning in your life and is examining that and how that can arise, and I think that's kind of what we focus on personally, that you got to keep living your life. 

I'm a dad, and I know that during the making of the album Cole became a dad too. Is anyone else a dad? 

Rest of the band: Not yet. 

Caulfield: I’m a dog dad. The dogfather. 

I was just wondering how did having a child change the way the band operates? I imagine responsibilities have changed somewhat. Did it have any influence over the lyrics?

Smith: Obviously we knew when he was going to be born, and hopefully we had an idea. And he came at a crucial time during writing and so a lot of the lyrics were written in the months anticipating him being born and also afterwards. So it did bring that kind of quest for meaning into it or the ways that people are able to navigate living in this world. Like how does every individual find purpose? And I think it kind of also highlighted just the thought process of how fucked up the world is. Because, as I'm sure you know, those big existential questions are at the forefront of your mind because you're just like ‘What am I bringing this person into without their consent?” So yeah, that was a big topic that brought a lot of these ideas to the front of my brain personally. But I feel like, in terms of how the band navigates, it just keeps us a bit more… we start earlier in the morning talking about stuff and just things are maybe a little bit more regimented or scheduled, because they have to be. 

Have any of your bandmates stepped up and babysat for you yet? 

Smith: No, you guys should, though you guys would have fun. 

Caulfield: I love kids. I'm good with kids. 

Smith: Yeah, Colin’s really good with kids. And then Bailey's great. Ben's great too, but we trained Ben. Early on he was like, “I don't want to hold the baby” and then they became best friends. But yeah, you guys should babysit. 

One thing I admire about the band is how you’ve embraced operating as a democracy. Was there any of that happening before you began Frog In Boiling Water?

Smith: Deceiver was a step in that direction. But then this album was fully, “Let's be like a mirror of the world we want to see.” No hierarchies, even weight given to each vote or whatever, and then navigate ways to make decisions within that model. But this is the first time it has become a truly 25 percent thing. 

I remember interviewing Cole for Is The Is Are and the image the publication ran was of just him, whereas now it’s a full band. I’m curious about what it means for the rest of the band to now be a part of a democracy where everyone has equal say? I imagine it's a lot more meaningful.

Caulfield: Yeah for sure. I mean, it's actually funny. Not that long ago I read the Pitchfork review of Is The Is Are and in that review it pulls from an interview snippet where Cole talks about the making of that record being democratic. So in a certain sense the stepping stone did start with that album because we all were in the same place out here in Los Angeles. We got this space and we were kind of arranging and playing the demos together. But it definitely wasn't even comparable to now. It's funny reading that review because it's part of the messaging of this.

Smith: …like projecting “this is what I want.” 

Caulfield: Yeah, exactly. But it feels cool, like a challenge, though it can be really confusing, because you have this conviction about an idea that you want and then you're constantly thinking, “Is this actually a good idea?” And you say out loud that you want more input, or you want to write or something, and then you're confronted with your own work. So it can be kind of a challenge to the ego, if that makes sense. Basically it comes with its pros and cons. 

Did becoming a democratic band change how the songwriting works? Were each of you on the hook to bring something to the table with this record or was it optional? 

Smith: More or less. It's just like the door was open, you know, and every song was up for the approval of everybody. Then, as we worked through stuff, some songs would float to the top and some wouldn't, or somebody would champion a song and get really behind it and push for it. The process was all over the place, but yeah, some demos that came from the guys, some were songs that maybe started as a demo I made, but the demo sucked, and then somebody would completely rewrite the entire song and make it into something really good. There are songs on the record that are both of those things, where people would contribute a part, or songs would just be made up on the spot when we're all in the room together, which happened for two songs on the record. We tried a lot of different approaches in order to make that model work. 

Another collaborative side to the band is your podcast, which you dusted off recently. What goes into deciding on a subject or theme for an episode? 

Newman: In the earlier iteration where we were talking about a specific record, there was a lot more research and preparation involved, which eventually killed the podcast. I think it was just too hard to do while also trying to make a record. So we're trying to do a slightly more laid-back version and we just really like to talk about music, it’s just always fun to do. People asked us a bunch of times to bring it back and at first we were like no, but then it happened so much that we felt we have an audience for this and we enjoy doing it, so why not do it without putting so much pressure on ourselves? Maybe there will be more researched or themed episodes in the future, but we've just been getting together and talking and we'll loosely decide to talk about one of the songs from the record or whatever. It's a lot looser now. 

Caulfield: It took so much work. The first season we were evaluating the podcast totally differently and wondering, “How do we make money from this? How do we make it worth the time?” Because the work was so intense. And now the past few ones, we basically just recorded a conversation that we would have normally, with a very loose structure. And it just seems much more manageable and it’s a cool supplement to all the shit that we're making for fans. It feels good and has become fun for us. 

I imagine Soul-Net is part of that too? Is that something you will keep going? 

Newman: It's ongoing. It started out as kind of a website and it's really become a whole cosmos of ideas and shit. So it's definitely an ongoing project along with the FIBW.org site, the podcast and all this additional stuff and the videos. 

Caulfield: The goal is to continue Soul-Net and FIBW.org as a much longer, ongoing greater art project around the album. A lot of times I feel like promotional campaigns end with the album coming out. But we're trying to continue to do that kind of shit months into the album's release. 

I definitely see DIIV’s body of work being divided into two periods. Oshin and Is The Is Are feel like companions, and Deceiver and Frog In Boiling Water share similar DNA. Was that intentional or coincidental?

Caulfield: I very much think that Oshin and Is The Is Are are like two sides of the same coin and Deceiver and Frog In Boiling Water are similarly on two sides of the same coin. I feel had we not had our hiatus in 2017-18, or whatever that was before we made Deceiver, whether or not it would still feel like that there was a rebirth of the band. So it makes sense that it's split that way. But I guess the real test of this idea of how our discography is segmented is what the next album we make sounds like, which we don't know yet. Maybe that'll again be a new chapter. There'll be two records that have things in common, but as of now, I think your take is correct from my perspective. 

The bio mentioned some music you recorded that didn't make the cut, like a Justin K Broderick-esque anti-rock record. Maybe the next one will sound like Jesu [pronounced “jay-zoo”]? Do you see the band releasing that stuff? 

Newman: I wish. I mean maybe, some little pieces of it, but there's a lot of stuff that will definitely not see the light of day. 

Colin: The Jesu [pronounces it “yay-zoo”] record. 

Is it pronounced “yay-zoo”? Have I been saying it wrong for 20 years? 

Smith: I've been saying “yay-zoo” and nobody's ever corrected me. 

I've interviewed Justin a couple times and he never corrected me.

Caulfield: Oh shit. 

Smith: Maybe we're wrong. What did you say Jesu [“jay-zoo”]? I have heard people say that. 

Deceiver was the first time I started hearing traces of shoegaze in DIIV’s music, and now people are pegging you as a “shoegaze band.” I frequent the Shoegaze subreddit, which really seems to champion DIIV. How aware of the shoegaze community are you? And what is your take on being labelled a shoegaze act?

Smith: Depends who you ask. 

Caulfield: Yeah, Bailey notoriously just refuses to even listen to shoegaze. 

Bailey: It's not that I refuse to.

Smith: We're definitely not purists around the genre or anything. We have been called a shoegaze band, like even before Deceiver and that is what made us want to make a more genre record with that one. And then this time we just examined our own catalogue and tried to chase down what our voice is, a band is, or what we do. 

Caulfield: I think us being known as the shoegaze band now is kind of just… Wait, it is “yay-zoo.” Bailey looked it up, it's “yay-zoo.” [Holds up phone with the Jesu Wikipedia page.]

Damn, I feel like an idiot saying that to him multiple times during my interviews with him. [Note: It turns out Broadrick uses both pronunciations of Jesu, according to Popmatters and Billboard.]

Caulfield: I think that the shoegaze tag now is kind of just a product you kind of deal with, not consequences in a bad way, but like you live with the repercussions of your previous record when you put out a new one. And so it makes sense that people understand us now as a shoegaze band, and so people are calling it the new shoegaze record without even having heard the album. I mean we're all big fans of shoegaze, except Bailey. So we’re aware of the community for sure and we’re interested. I feel like at this point it's been a common talking point throughout all the interviews we’ve done, and - this isn't a comment on your question at all - but I think we're getting fatigued by it now. It's still okay because all the new bands are cool and interesting, and if there is a genre that deserves to really pop off with young people, I'm glad it's something experimental like shoegaze. 

Smith: Yeah, it's cool for us to learn from the younger generation. You know, how to expand on the genre that, theoretically, has already been perfected. 

Have you ever checked out the DIIV subreddit? 

Bailey: Yeah, but don't tell them.

Caulfield: They don’t like that we look at the subreddit but actually now we have a Discord and we actually post there. That community is a lot more active than the subreddit. 

DIIV has toured with Depeche Mode and How To Destroy Angels. What did you take away from playing these massive gigs with legacy artists like that? 

Smith: Every tour we've ever done we have some crucial takeaways or lessons that we've learned. And a lot of bands, when you're opening for them, you see them as this kind of like big brother or maybe, in the case of Depeche Mode, like a father figure type where you imagine yourself in their role. For us it was like “Is that something we want? How do we do it? What are their operations like? What's their workflow like? What's the culture like?” We did like a little YouTube documentary, a tongue-in-cheek thing talking about our experience and the lessons learned from the Depeche Mode tour. But I think every time there is stuff to be gleaned. You see an operation that's so efficient and so massive and there is stuff to be learned. Like what roles are important? What elements of a show are important? What is a live show? What are you doing? Like what do you do with your time on the stage? Every time it's different. And the Trent Reznor tour was a crazy lesson in what's possible visually on stage and the culture of that tour. They were just so approachable and friendly. It's important to see some of the best artists of all time who are just cool as people, you know. 

Did you get to actually hang out with them? 

Caulfield: Yeah, a little bit with Depeche Mode. We had few meaningful hangs with them. 

You’re bringing a couple bands I love to Toronto this summer: Horse Jumper Of Love and full body 2. You’re also playing dates with SASAMI, Glixen, trauma ray, They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, and untitled (halo), who are all bands I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Who in the band has the great taste?

Caulfield: I think it's a collaboration. We're all submitting stuff. 

Newman: We worked really hard on trying to get good openers for that tour, because this is our first headline U.S. tour in quite some time. 

Smith: The previous one we did with full body 2 and Sword II. Yeah, we worked really hard to get openers that we like. When we're at the show, it's so cool to be able to watch a show that you like and then play a show. It's really cool for us to see these bands. 

Caulfield: Similarly too we obviously learn something from going on tour with Depeche Mode. There's a lot to learn from opening bands too. When you have a sick, younger, for the lack of better term, more innocent band on tour with you, it's a good reminder of what's important and why you started playing music in the first place. Because as we get older, things are more complicated and we try to do a good job of maintaining our artistic purity or whatever. But there are still so many distractions in life. And then you go on tour with full body 2, for example, and they're just so excited to be playing shows and they're so nice and creative and you can tell that their imaginations are just off the charts right now. It's good to be around that kind of energy. 

They haven't come to Toronto yet. But a friend and I drove down to Syracuse in November to see full body 2 and Hotline TNT play this community centre and it was awesome. Just this packed, small show in a basement and the crowd there was so into it. Last question: as a record collector, I’ve noticed there are a few different variants available for the vinyl version of the album. How involved are you guys in deciding what those look like? 

Smith: Very. It almost became a joke where we were like, “Okay, let's get a new vinyl colour,” because there's a lot of different stores or different outlets that want something exclusive. For us, being record purists as well - Ben's the only true collector among us - but we kind of came up in that culture with Captured Tracks where the physical product is important to us, like the booklet and the packaging. All of that stuff is very thought-out. And that comes down to the vinyl colours and what matches or what the different vibes we want are. It's fun.

Newman: Like Cole was saying, it can become a joke at a certain point when there are so many variants. You kind of just get to the point where you’re like, “What colour haven't we done yet?” 

Caulfield: And all of the names of the colours are so silly. 

Newman: Yeah, they're like “Angel Smoke” or whatever. 

Yeah, I recently picked up an Unwound reissue on Numero Group and the variant is called “Police Tape Yellow,” but really it’s just opaque yellow. They’re just getting more creative with the descriptors for each colour now. Have any of you tried the Frog In Boiling Water coffee blend that Fuzz Coffee Roasters developed to sell with their variant?

Smith: I'm a huge coffee nerd. I roast my own coffee and I'm super into espresso making. I’ve got a crazy setup. So usually things like that, you know, where I see a band will do a beer or wine collab and I'm like, “Shut the fuck up.” But this was one where I was honestly like, “Fuck it.” And so I got to email with them and talk about what kind of profiles I like, what kind of regions of beans I like, what kind of roasts I like, and it seems like they were excited to talk about that kind of nerdy stuff too. But I guess they're gonna send us a bag of it or something. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully it's good.