BN: We had an interview yesterday where he was talking about Covid and post-Covid times and how when you’re living through history, there is this feeling of, “Oh man, maybe we could get it right this time.” It hopeful but also kind of just sad because it doesn’t usually shake out that way.
ZCS: While we were making the record, my wife and I had a baby. There’s this conflict that I think any parent goes through of bringing a kid into a really fucked up world, and ultimately the decision we made was to do that. And I think you have to hold on to some type of hope, whether on a micro scale or a macro scale, and we deal with both of those. But the hope is a lot of times in the musical elements of the songs rather than lyrical. We didn’t want to make a totally scorched earth, black-pilled record because that would be boring, and I think the human experience is more complex. You do all types of mental gymnastics just to exist, and it’s important to have that kind of duality in the music. We always talk about it: happy/sad. That’s the best feeling that music can give you a lot of times.
I read that this album was initially going to break dramatically from your signature sound and be more of a samples-based record.
BN: Sort of. It went through a lot of different phases because it took us a long time to figure it out. We did use some samples, but I think it was more computer-based, like software instruments. It was actually years into the process that it started to become more of a rock record again.
ZCS: I think that was a direct consequence of being isolated in the pandemic. With rock music, you picture a band in a room playing to people, and without that context it stops making sense. So, when we were working on music on the computer, isolated, it was really in that direction. It wasn’t until we brought in Chris Coady where he wanted to lean into our strengths a bit more, and being a live band is one of our strengths.
CC: It’s just hard to distill. It took so long and it involved so many different approaches. Except for when Chris was like, “You guys are going to play the album,” it didn’t feel like there were big forks in the road. One path would bring us back to the same path and vice versa. It’s funny, because I do the same thing with other bands’ albums, but people love to get an understanding of the timeline. But when you’re actually making an album, you’re just throwing stuff at the wall.
Was it always the same set of songs or did you cycle through a lot of material to land here?
AB: These were always in the mix, but we definitely had a big pile of songs that we picked these out of over time. We had a whole rating system and democracy and all that fun stuff. These were the cream that rose to the top — not because they were the best songs, but because they fit and felt like they belong together.
So, there’s another album you could have made out of that big pile of songs?
AB: Oh yeah. There’s, like, 10 records.
BN: We talked about the idea of a double record or a Kid A/Amnesiac-type thing, doing two records in a row. I really wanted to have 15 B-sides or whatever. But when the time came to book studio time, it became clear that we had to narrow it down because of money and time. Ten songs took us four years. I could only imagine if we decided to do 20 songs.
CC: In my opinion, there is not another DIIV record in the stuff we made. I feel like we have such high standards, so there’s good ideas and songs, but the 10 that we wound up with are the DIIV songs, if that makes sense. The other ones didn’t fit. It’s a challenge for us because a lot of bands — and this isn’t a comment on quality of music or whatever — but they don’t have the same criteria that they’re rigorously trying to adhere to. They’re just trying to make songs, and we’re chasing an abstract feeling. Which is both cool and uncool sometimes, when it becomes difficult.
When you’re making a record, do you think about how this thing is going to fit with the other albums you’ve made.
AB: Definitely.
ZCS: I think that’s something that we were always thinking about. On Deceiver, we were referencing a lot of other bands. We were trying to make a genre record, so we were pulling up records and studying records and really being students of other bands. And on this one — it wasn’t really on purpose — but we did not do that ever. It seemed way more self-referential and trying to chase down this thing, what we do. Even picking the album art, I remember taking a screenshot of Apple Music and putting the album art next to the other albums and seeing if it fits. We literally did that.
My initial thought when I heard Frog In Boiling Water is that it distills everything you do well. I have this concept of the “new greatest hits” record, where it’s an album of new songs but they sound like they could be old hits. This album is like that to me.
CC: The thing that Deceiver lacks is the atmosphere that the first two albums have, especially Oshin. You put it on and it’s like a cloud that you step into, and it just surrounds you as you listen to it. And I feel like the new album really has that. For a lot of people, that is part of what they fell in love with with the first two albums — this rich, dreamy atmosphere that is very feelings-forward. Rather than this song has an amazing bridge and an amazing chorus. A lot of times with the earlier songs, sometimes there wasn’t even a chorus, but it didn’t really matter because the song felt so good to listen to. I feel like the new album has an element of that which makes it feel more comprehensive in our catalog.
Frog In Boiling Water also feels like the most overtly shoegaze-sounding album you’ve made. We’re in a moment when a younger audience is rediscovering that music via social media apps like TikTok. What do you think is DIIV’s relationship with that genre, and have you noticed an influx of younger fans?
ZCS: We’re definitely not genre purists and don’t really love talking about genre, but I think this rediscovery of shoegaze also represents a new reinvention of shoegaze, and seeing how the new generation processes it or expands on the genre is really exciting. I think we wanted to make a political shoegaze record or a political record that doesn’t seem like something that’s a part of the genre. We want to expand on it in our own way. And it’s cool that there’s this paradigm where people are — I can’t think of the word — not embellishing but expanding on the genre.
CC: It definitely feels like we have a surge of new fans, but it has yet to feel distilled or specifically part of that kind of shoegaze revival. But it does seem like all of those new bands that are blowing up are fans of us, which is cool. So, it feels like we’re connected to them. But we’re not necessarily reaping the benefits as directly as some of those new kinds of more viral shoegaze bands, which makes sense because like Cole saying, they’re expanding the genre in terms of aesthetic. And it feels like we did that with this album, but in a slightly different way, and a much more lyrically driven way.
AB: It’s always been confusing for me because I had never listened to shoegaze and still haven’t. When we first came out and people were like, “Oh, you’re a shoegaze band” I was like, “All right, cool, whatever you say.” But then we toured with an actual shoegaze band, No Joy, and I was like, “We don’t do any of that.” I guess it was just a vibe that people picked up on. Honestly, I’m still confused by it, but now that I understand what those essential ingredients are and seeing how we did use them on our third album, I guess I see what people are talking about when they think of us as a shoegaze band before any other genre that we could just as easily fit into.
Circling back to the “burn it down” conversation: Zachary, you have been an outspoken critic of Spotify and you co-founded the music industry collective United Musicians and Allied Workers union. How hopeful are you that there is a post-streaming future?
ZCS: I don’t think that listening to music online is bad. The problem is that it’s a tech giant using the library of recorded music as fodder to sell their tech and it devalues music. But I do think that a socialized streaming model or a public free library would be amazing. And it wouldn’t be all our money is going to a tech company.
I think that a streaming model is possible, but it wouldn’t be this one. It wouldn’t be a corporate one.
AB: There’s no reason at all that the main profits generated by streaming music go to the middleman. They’re using the internet, which was built with taxpayer money, to charge people to listen to other people’s music. The fact that there isn’t a nationalized streaming service is just absurd.
