Diiv Isn't Afraid to Get Political With Its Music

Despite forming more than a decade ago, indie-rock aficionados are just getting to know New York City-based band Diiv (pronounced dive).

The four members that make up the band's arsenal — Zachary Cole Smith (lead vocals), Andrew Bailey (guitar), Colin Caulfield (a jack of all trades), and Ben Newman (drums) — recently sat down with New Times to chat ahead of their upcoming show at Revolution Live on Sunday, July 21.

"I love that we're a really, really hard-working band, and we keep each other really accountable," Caulfield says. "It feels like all four of us, as a unit, we're always getting better — which maybe is not really the norm, necessarily, and that's really satisfying. Especially as we get older, and this becomes a more permanent thing — more of a fixture in our lives — rather than just a band that we're in."

"We're like the type of band that I would have respected when I was younger and more critical of music," Bailey adds. "I remember being really disappointed in bands like Weezer, who kind of just made the same record over and over again. And I also remember when Smashing Pumpkins put out the Adore album, Billy Corban said, 'I know nobody likes this, but whatever, this is what I'm making right now. Maybe someday, in 20 years, somebody will say it's their favorite Smashing Pumpkins record.' So I love that that's what we're doing, too."

The title of the band's latest album, Frog in Boiling Water, seems off-the-cuff, but as Smith explains, it was selected based on American author Daniel Quinn's use of the phrase to draw parallels to late-stage capitalism in his 1996 novel The Story of B. The metaphor argues that if a frog is thrown into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately; however, if it's put into a pot of lukewarm water and the temperature is turned up increasingly, it will die in the water before it is even aware of what's happening.
"The author is talking about this normalization of an increasingly dystopian or unsustainable, dangerous world," says Smith. "It's about this very banal idea of collapse — not a catastrophic singular event, but a very slow unraveling."

Notably, the quartet started the album roughly four years ago, which, when doing the math, means they began working on the project at the very start of the pandemic that has arguably thrown many into an existential headspace since. However, while both events overlapping is coincidental, the band let the lyrics evolve, eventually landing the title in response to the songs they had written. Especially given the various impacts that are still manifesting from the lockdown period today, they do their best to be there for their audience with thought-provoking and relatable lyrics.

"The album is absolutely to the world and what it is to exist right now. It's political," Caulfield explains. "But it's not like we set out in July 2021 or something and said this is what we were going to do. The four of us were kind of fishing at first, making a bunch of different kinds of songs and seeing which ones we got excited about."

Lyrics like "A doomsday machine glitch/Is our new god" from the opening track "In Amber" or "Systems fail/And empires fall/Walking the Earth like ants on a sugar ball" from "Fender on the Freeway" bring both a sense of profoundness and all-too-familiar mundanity that most of us have grown accustomed to.

While all of those lyrics are wrapped in an ethereal, slow-rock guitar sound comparable to bands like Beach House or Slowdive, reading the entirety of the album's lyrics asks the listener to analyze and re-analyze them like a gripping collection of poems one could find at their local indie bookstore.

Press materials for Diiv even call the band's music "smart rock." When asked what the label means, they're honest enough to say it's a phrase they've never heard or coined but that it must mean people can truly see the intentionality behind their art.
The crux of the album isn't only found in the roster of its songs but also on the website soul-net.co, which the band published ahead of its release. Though it mimics rudimentary conspiracy theory sites, some of the grievances listed reflect the inevitable thoughts that come with living in a society that prioritizes war, greed, and profit over simply loving thy neighbor.

Statements appear alongside a nine-minute track on the site, also titled "Soulnet," including "The hippies make money from war — don't trust the hippies," which is paired with a vintage picture of long-haired Bill and Hillary Clinton circa 1970, and bold black text reading things like "Did the powers that be acknowledge your suffering? No, they never do, but you felt it, right?" All of it echoes the ethos of Diiv's latest project, alongside the idea that human existence might all be one big illusion.

The band has also been candid about their struggles in staying together for so long, which isn't uncommon in the underground or rock scenes. Whether related to addiction, the pressures of the corporate entertainment industry, or the simple tension that comes with growing alongside a group of your peers, the members have been through it all — which also charges the album's emotional aura as you make your way through each song.

"I think that the way that we approach everything in the band is by not giving up. If you've hit a roadblock, you just figure out a way around it or through it, and you just keep going," Newman explains. "I think that outside of the band, life is a little bit like that, too. It's like giving up at a certain point isn't really an option, so you either grit your teeth and sit with your suffering, or you figure out a way around it somehow."

The Brooklyn band is ready to make its way to South Florida next week, which they haven't been able to interact with very often in their decade-long career. Given the diversity of thought and music in South Florida's underground scene, it's a piece that the quartet is ready to explore as they kick off their 2024 tour.

"Miami has a New Orleans-type quality to me, in the sense that it doesn't really feel like the rest of the U.S.," Caulfield says. "So it's really fun to go there because it feels so indebted to culture, and when you tour the U.S., there's a general sense of monotony that can creep in where a lot of places do feel the same. We haven't played there that many times, so we're definitely always down to go over and explore everything it has to offer."

Diiv. With Horse Jumper of Love and Dutch Interior. 7 p.m. Sunday, July 21, at Revolution Live, 100 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale; 954-449-1025; jointherevolution.net. Tickets cost $35 via ticketmaster.com.