DIIV confront social turmoil with more simplicity on ZIRP!

Until now, DIIV's answer has been to push their songs to progressively hazier depths, from 2012’s scrappily constructed Oshin through to the ominously crushing Frog in Boiling Water in 2024. The heaviness is arresting, sure, but the prolonged submersion left their music feeling a little inert, despite the exquisite sound design. The pioneers of shoegaze inescapably endure in the background, inviting comparison even as a band attempts to push beyond discharging a dense mass of sound from their guitars. This genre, so synonymous with density, has but one answer to impel innovation: less is more. How, then, do you make this wizardry more spellbinding? Move into the pop world, of course. Cut the suffocating dynamics to get more breathing room. DIIV – who are currently Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, and Ben Newman – have always tied their ambitious guitar voyages to a mast of great songwriting. Their unanimous pinnacle so far, 2019’s Deceiver, saw Smith thoroughly weaving his vulnerable reflections into everyone’s pensive instrumentation, a stylistic choice catalysed by the band’s own turmoil. Frog in Boiling Water, meanwhile, aimed at the existential dread that com...