On the night of Feb. 22, the SLO Brew Rock backdrop screen flashed with a stock image of a partly cloudy sky, illuminating the warehouse venue with bright, sterile light. A middle-aged, white male figure then faded onto the screen. It was difficult to tell if the man was a real actor or a deepfake image, created to wax poetic about the concert and the transcendental experience it promised viewers.
Nearing the end of his monologue, the man announced: “Thank you for joining us. Hang onto your hats and prepare to be changed profoundly forever. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, DIIV.”
The band took the stage one by one, launching into the fuzzy brooding chords of “In Amber,” the first song off their most recent album “Frog in Boiling Water.”
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PIN IT“The last decade of American life has been pretty stressful, which is what the album is about, and so it seemed kind of impossible to ignore,” drummer Ben Newman said.
The album will turn one this May, a collection of 10 psychedelic shoegaze tracks steeped in the restlessness of societal pressures and capitalism, the main subjects explored in the lyrics.
“I think there was kind of a coalescence of the tension between the four of us and the subject matter of the album running into each other,” bassist Colin Caulfield said. “It’s hard to tell what the mood or anxiety of the album comes from, if it’s more from the subject matter of the songs or the world we built out or if it’s from our difficulties.”
The band members are honest about their troubles shaping the album. Having worked, performed and grown together for nearly a decade, personal strife was bound to get in the way at some point.
“We set out to make an intense album and when there’s intensity in the music, it makes sense to me that that will kind of rub off in the real-world experience of making it. I feel like there are classic records where, you know, you read about the band almost killing each other and you listen to the record and you’re like ‘well I can definitely hear it,’” Caulfield said.
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PIN ITSelf-proclaimed in their stubbornness, the members of DIIV sought to ignore personal strife and work through the album as best as they could, but there always comes a breaking point.
“I feel like the stubbornness actually bit us in the ass a bit because we’re trying to be good workers and artists and just put our heads down and work as hard as we could to finish. At a certain point we had to talk,” Caulfield explained. “As soon as we talked, it was this huge sigh of relief and it’s not like everything was magically fixed but the path forward — all of a sudden — became much less stressful.”
They compared band dynamics to that of a family, where lack of communication can harbor resentment and animosity, neither of which are conducive to writing an album. The pressure of creating an album is far higher at this stage, almost 10 years in.
“10, 12 years ago if we made a shit album or had to cancel tours it’s like ‘well I guess I’ll just go get a real job,’ but now it’s kind of late for that and if we fuck this up it’s bad news,” guitarist Andrew Bailey said.
On stage at SLO Brew, the years they’ve spent together are evident. The band moves seamlessly through the set without a hint of nerves as their swirling chords ring out and elaborate graphics flash behind them.
Despite the difficulties, DIIV proved successful in their release, this album cycle being uniquely creative for the members.
Scrolling down the screen through the length of their song “Soul-net” is a seemingly endless website for DIIV’s corporation of the same name. Filled with low-res memes, spiritual gibberish and the overall low-quality look of an early 2000s website, Soul-net rolls out in pace with the meandering track.
The song was first released exclusively on the website, one of many stunts pulled during the “Frog in Boiling Water” release.
“We definitely didn’t want the album rollout to feel super serious and doom and gloom even though it sort of is in a way, and I think that a lot of humor comes from absurdity,” Newman said. “The real situation that we find ourselves in is often pretty absurd so I think it’s funny to kind of shine a flashlight on the absurd stuff.”
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PIN ITAbsurdity was a highlight of DIIV’s show, as their fuzzy guitars were broken up by intermittent videos of uncanny valley-looking actors monologuing in corporate-speak gibberish. During their songs, a collection of found footage, TV static and lyrics played over a red screen.
“This last cycle has felt extremely creative because the show has all this additional non-musical stuff with the visuals … it’s more of some sort of meta performance,” Caulfield said.
DIIV recently announced a summer tour through Europe, offering more opportunities for fans to experience this “meta performance” before the band shifts and takes on a new project.
