BIO

BIO

Four years into making their fourth album, Frog in Boiling Water, the four members of DIIV needed to talk—not later, but now.

The extended process had been uncertain and sometimes grueling, not only pushing them to up their musicianship but also taxing most every resource and bond they had ever cultivated. During the prior decade, DIIV had helped revitalize dream-pop and shoegaze alike, culminating in 2019’s unapologetic genre showcase, Deceiver. But with it, DIIV were now out of contract, proverbial free agents who didn’t owe anything to anyone but themselves—that is, to make a record that challenged them, that pushed their sound beyond any previous parameters.

But after all that collective toil, their relationships with one another were fraying badly inside that singular alchemical state of being a band, where dynamics of family, friendship, and finances become entangled in a Gordian knot. There were suspicions and resentments, bruised egos and anxious questions, all fingerprints left by a quest that demanded DIIV grow both together and apart. So on June 1, 2023, just before they began to mix four years of effort, DIIV—Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman, and Zachary Cole Smith—gathered in Echo Park Lake, the scene of so many halcyon hangs in their early days, under vaguely gray skies to air accumulated grievances. They dropped the shields of professionalism that had let them work amid the rancor and allowed themselves to get mad and bummed, real and vulnerable. Really, it could have broken DIIV before Frog in Boiling Water was finished.

This fireside, however tense, worked: DIIV eventually finished Frog in Boiling Water. It is a gorgeous and haunted record, as DIIV gaze into our collective oblivion and try to articulate a trace of hope inside that enveloping gloom. Balancing rhythms first built from breakbeats and inspired by post-industrial power with guitars and vocals that often billow like diaphanous drapery, Frog in Boiling Water is mighty but breezy, greyscale but opalescent. “Reflected,” for instance, surges through softness, reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves to survive while wondering if they still serve us. “Brown Paper Bag” funnels dejection and angst into an exquisite intersection of dream-pop and post-rock, a wispy tune stretching from a steely foundation. Though DIIV helped to foster a shoegaze scene that has since swept up many imaginations, they rose above it despite nearly falling apart. On these 10 songs, they brood beautifully inside music that frets about the present and future—but at least acknowledges it can still exist.

The instant DIIV finished Deceiver in early 2019, they were ready to run it back, to make another live-in-the-room record as soon as possible. The sessions had been brief and efficient, the four members in newfound lockstep. Could they amplify that feeling? They never got the chance. With the world upended, every member began working on their own pieces, individual tastes accreting into a mountain of material so large they began to grade each item, A to F. They daydreamed about what the pieces might eventually make, sometimes discarding the notion of a “rock record” for one made with computers and samples or sometimes pondering something as heavy and blissful as Justin K. Broadrick’s Jesu. There were samples, tape machines, breakbeats: Everything seemed possible, open, new.

DIIV had once been hamstrung by obdurate headlines, gossip about Smith’s personal problems often overshadowing the work of the cohesive, smart rock quartet they had gradually become. What’s more, Smith co-founded United Musicians and Allied Workers, an organization devoted to wresting power away from an entertainment oligarchy. Principles from both scenarios—no hierarchy and equal participation, no overriding frontman but instead four people interacting in full—had become central to DIIV’s approach, prompting them to move as a democracy more than ever before.

This equitable approach created inevitable strain, especially when DIIV finally rendezvoused in early 2022 to figure out how all their enthusiasms could cohere. They decamped to a rented home in the Mojave, guitars, recording gear, and a clutch of books about humanity’s failures, psychological warfare, and Zen poetry in tow. They worked 13 hours a day for 10 days straight, so taxed as they tried to circle a sound that Caulfield earned himself a case of nicotine poisoning. They hoped to finish the bulk of the record there, to capture a room sound that felt ineffable. But stress mounted as they struggled to solidify what their fourth album could be, to funnel their individual passions into a collective whole that also said something about our precarious moment. They headed home without a record.

Adding another strong perspective did not alleviate this tension, but it did help break the stalemate. For DIIV, working with producer Chris Coady—whose records with the likes of Beach House and Blonde Redhead were mutual lodestars—was fittingly aspirational. They felt they would need to rise to his level. In September 2022, as they began religiously tracking six days a week at his home studio for the next nine months, he became the de facto fifth member, joining existential debates about DIIV’s direction and how to get there. He switched sides as he saw fit.

Even when the conflicts felt insurmountable, with five personalities vying for a say in DIIV’s future, they all showed up and tried, anyway. They all worked to get better, too. Sometimes that meant Newman was up at 7 a.m. to practice breakbeats created by some of the best drummers in the world. Sometimes that meant Coady setting up a tape machine in his backyard, Bailey filling it with warped tape samples that DIIV could then weave into the worlds they were trying to build. And Smith became a father in November 2022, prompting a three-month pause as he wrestled with a central, difficult question at home: How could he lyrically conjure a dystopia with a newborn in the house, or pair the new hope he had with an honest assessment of the world he knew? It all felt like that midair moment during a complicated skateboard trick, wondering if you have what it takes to land the thing.

Again, they did: These songs mine a new lyrical and musical depth, those two halves mirroring one another inside a reflective and immersive whole. Opener “In Amber,” for instance, offers an internal existential debate about slipping out of this world, of shaking off its turmoil. The downtrodden guitars of Smith and Bailey perfectly paint this feeling for the first half, but they lift together toward the end, an act of resistance against abject despair.

Or there’s the way that Newman and Caulfield conjure a very warped and muted funk inside the rhythm section of “Soul-Net,” a prime canvas for Smith’s character study about those who have found meaning for a vacuous life through online conspiracy theories. Here is our suffering, sold and weaponized against us inside endless rabbit holes. They ride this haze into panoramic finale “Fender on the Freeway,” a chiming drift that steadily tightens and coils like a ripple of lean muscle. “You can’t unring a bell,” Smith sings, voice soft-lidded but suppliant. “We live in heaven, and we live in hell.” That is the contrast that every song on Frog in Boiling Water frames so well—the darkness of these days, an appreciation of existence itself.

On that afternoon in Echo Park, the future seemed very much in doubt for DIIV. They were exhausted, broke, and bruised, having spent four years in a four-way trust fall without knowing how it might end. Voicing concerns doesn’t always fix them, of course, but could they understand one another enough to carry on, together? They did, finally starting the process of finishing Frog in Boiling Water in the days that followed. Still, everyone in DIIV will tell you now that those conflicts—the natural result of four people whose lives have become so intertwined, trying to make art that speaks to humanity’s current place on a complicated precipice—still exist. To some extent, they remain an engine inside of their art.

That is, in many ways, the essence of Frog in Boiling Water, a record about doing your best to carry on in spite of oft-grim prospects. While making Frog in Boiling Water, DIIV taxed their bonds and brotherhood, pushing themselves to the brink as a band, as buds. The result, however, is a mesmeric testament to enduring, to envisioning anything else on the other side while you remain here, in the slowly heating water of right now.

Lyrics

Tracklist + Lyrics:

01 – In Amber

02 – Brown Paper Bag

03 – Raining on Your Pillow

04 – Frog In Boiling Water

05 – Everyone Out

06 – Reflected

07 – Somber the Drums

08 – Little Birds

09 – Soul-net

10 – Fender on the Freeway

In Amber

I can’t look away

in anger

I want to disappear

In amber

Swallowed by a fantasy

to be the end of history

An anchor

you want to disappear?

our prayers are answered

My eyes have seen it all

Nothing’s forgotten

I find it’s hard to

Imagine a shock

The rotating villains

Profit off suffering

A doomsday machine glitch

Is our new god

The banality of evil

Poison the garden

Bearing false witness

Sparing no cost

Remember they told us

The tide lifts our boats up

That ocean is dried out

And I can’t look away…

I can’t look away

In anger

I want to disappear

Brown Paper Bag

Cost me nothing to say

My mind’s at ease

When I’m in pain

Quietly swept away

I circle the drain

So there I go

Torn

Faded

a brown paper bag

Stuck on the ground

Down

Wasted

Just a brown paper bag

again

Put a smile on my face

My home in flames

The past erased

I’ll embrace my mistakes

On some other day

So there I go

Torn

Faded

A brown paper bag

Stuck on the ground

Down

Wasted

Just a brown paper bag

Again

There I go

Where will I go

Raining On Your Pillow

In a waterfall

and I waited for ya

Where the order stalled

It wasn’t normal

We’re just fodder for the army op

There’s a river out there somewhere winding from the fall

There’s a river out there somewhere I’m the only owner of

Look how far Away we are from here

Look how far away we are, we are

away from here

Far away

And I’ll tumble for ya

In a waterfall

and I waited for ya

but the order stalled

We wouldn’t go on

Kill the soldier that’s behind the eyes

There’s a river out there somewhere

I’m the only owner of

Frog in Boiling Water

All collapse

In the sun

The hammer and the dance

Forever having fun

“burn the books

don’t you see?

history begins

Right now with you and me”

Wasted all the commons

a looted golden calf

Ivory towers and ivory crosses

my livelihood is rotting in your hand

man

The future came

and everything’s known

There’s nothing left to say

Show’s over, take me home

Far away

Distant lands

See the world

You can see the world

With a big gun in your hand

Wasted all the commons

a looted golden calf

Ivory towers and ivory crosses

My livelihood is rotting in your hand

Man

Everyone Out

Let it fall my way

I need this

beautiful time

Feels so right

As water flows from

the corner of my eye

I’m ready for my life

can’t wait

I’m on my way out of town

I’m on my way out

I’m on my way out of town

I’m on my way now

Ready for my life

Have faith

this beautiful time

will be all mine

I’ll bring you all down

Try and stop me now

I’m ready for my rise

Just wait

I’m on my way out of town

I’m on my way out

I’m on my way out of town

I’m on my way now

Reflected

I’m throwing dice

I can’t describe

I want to know

Two of a kind

Savor the rind

And gnaw at the bones

Everybody fears the unknown

Look in my eyes

Repeat the lie:

“We can still have hope”

Remind me why

Our parasites

Are still in control

Everybody hears me

i know

The worst of times

Leave them behind

But keep that lump in your throat

Our lives are done

The good guys won

And everybody had fun

Will you please leave me alone

this swarm of flies

a pool of lies

Slices of life

We kill then we die

Puke out my guts

The sun erupts

Forgot our guns

Lay down no fun

Waves mountain high

A flash of light

I felt the decline

in clean water lines

Die on my hill

Man what a thrill

The clock unwinds

Such exciting times

Somber the Drums

Somber the drums

The folks from out of town look on

Unfeeling

all alone

stuff your pockets full of stones for no one to see

Somber the drums

The folks from out of town look on

Oh really

Burned our homes

Made vapor from a garden stone for no one

Somber the drums

The folks from out of town look on

They’re ready

caught alone

pick and throw your hardest stone at someone, at me

Little Birds

Losing the war

You got another one up against the wall

Wind fall out

From another one who wants the night

To fill the day

“Go on…”

You got another one up against the wall

Can’t flow out

Let another one pass the test

But feel the same

Make time for the war

I can’t find my time

This one’s for the world

I’m losing my mind

Changing for the worse

Fighting all the time

Came home in a hearse

Leave the past behind

Losing the war

Get another one up against the wall

Wind fall out

Pass another resolution

Ghosts and little birds

“Go on…”

You got another one up against the wall

Can’t flow out

Let another one pass the test

But feel the same

Soul-net

I’ve struggled with my faith,

Raved and been insane

My life got away from me

You ask me where I’ve been

And I say:

“I’m not afraid

I’ve lived through pain

but I’m learning to see through

everything”

We were lost

Now we have something

They own our lives

and harvest our suffering

Turn from the light

cycle is karmic

I want to be nothing

…just say:

“I’m not afraid

I love my pain

I know we can leave this prison”

Fender on the Freeway

Tangled thoughts

As daylight faded out

That I can’t find the words to speak about

Laughing in

the vast and vacant sprawl

A fleck of dust and somehow self involved

No one has

Returned from death to show

That life on earth had really made them grow

Systems fail

And empires fall

walking the earth like ants on a sugar ball

We’re nothing to the sprawl

But does that bring me pain or comfort?

It’s over now

but it will start again

The cycle goes around it never ends

You can’t unring a bell

We live in heaven and we live in hell

God is gone

And out the tape will play

Lying like a fender on the freeway

Tangled in the sprawl

A life of pain, a life of comfort

Systems fail

And empires fall

Walking the earth like ants on a sugar ball

DIIV – Frog In Boiling Water

DIIV – Frog In Boiling Water

DIIV – Frog In Boiling Water