It's been five years since DIIV's last album – obviously, there's been some lingering tension. To set the table: After lead singer Zachary Cole Smith was arrested in 2013 for heroin possession, preempting his first trip to rehab, and former DIIV bassist Devin Ruben Perez was kicked out of the band for making racist comments on 4chan, DIIV “essentially they broke up”. in 2016. Then, after another stint in rehab, Smith and the band got back together for their latest album in 2019 Fraudbut at this point, frustration was built into their dynamic.
The press material is conspicuously vague about how the band worked through “suspicion and resentment” before completion Frog in boiling water, their sour new album that tackles capitalism. Chiffon layers of reverb wrap around the guitars like a burial shroud, and Smith accepts the boat ride to purgatory with distant vocals. “Will you please leave me alone,” he pleads on “Reflected,” swinging through lost souls with aplomb. He's used to the dark.
Other DIIV albums deal more with the inner darkness, addiction and depression that mark the band's history. But Frog recognizes that these ills are fed by and within an already wretched society. “Systems fail and empires fall,” Smith shrugs under the guitar drops on “Fender on the Freeway,” sounding tired and overstimulated. While FrogHis vocal melodies are often simple, with the lightness of a nursery rhyme, the adaptation to the lyrics making them sound more like sugar-coated pills. They establish Smith both as an objector to the failed system and as another of its many dormant subjects, free-floating in the rush of frustration. The weightless “Frog In Boiling Water” blames technology for this misogyny, drowning out frustration the way some people replace unpleasant sensations with internet posts.
Driving up to FrogAfter its release, DIIV published an independent, endless scrolling, Web 1.0 site called soul-net.co. Its content informs visitors that “we are all grease [the capitalist machine] with our blood and sweat”. Below that text, a nude GIF of a fairy waving blue wings, a list combining “chimneys, camps, dumps, DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES” and there's a PNG of John Hancock's signature. It goes on and on, like the ramblings of a computer-savvy serial killer in the 90s. The site also has an autoplay song, “Soul-net”, which is featured on Frog like the mirage of a star, a flash of irony: “I'm not afraid,” Smith asserts, “I love my pain.”
You could derive some of the band's restless hysteria from this. They enjoy images and ideas usually associated with suspicious grandmothers on Facebook who worry about “seed oils”. As an anonymous account alongside an image of lizard Joe Biden might say, Smith is disturbed by how “spinning thugs profit from suffering.” He mocks the purpose of a good citizen, to be “food for the army.” But he also sings with soft insistence, and his restraint is convincing. Everyone has a good reason to feel as broken as Frog sounds. His guitar-driven production makes sense of the angst by dropping it into pressure-cooker moans.
Although, more often than not, guitars would rather wallow in the mud. The band revels in simple, muscular melodies, such as on the brooding “In Amber”. There, the rhythm guitar bounces like a jittery leg until the guitar leads the song to open. DIIV repeatedly employ this tactic throughout the album, presenting each song as a cold tomb that will usually be ignited by a one-note guitar solo that you can feel in your stomach. It is exciting. “Little Birds” is like a dry lightning field, empty except for the occasional crackle of distortion. But her guitar always returns to the same note, filling the space with an insistent echo. These recurring moments come like a ticking clock, and Frog in boiling water it operates with a prophetic understanding that time is already over.
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you purchase something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
