DIIV - the next Nirvana? lol

why bother listen to 'a kinda groovy post punk thing' when plenty of other bands and records do the same mood, but better, and with strong songs? this sort of band feels completely superfluous. everything about them is superficial.

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Wednesday, July 3, 2013 1:45 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno, why listen to any rock band when you could listen to miles davis or mozart?

every band has distinctive things about them, just the way ppl pay together and sound, even within a narrow template....ppl keep bringing up interpol but you don't see the benefit of having a more kraut/jam influenced interpol with more guitar shit and less of those TERRIBLE LYRICS mixed was up in your face??

xxp ok, so he wants his band to be big. cool.

it's just funny to me that ppl are rushing in to defend nirvana's honor or w/e when it doesn't seem like anyone has made a *musical* comparison.

i like this song, but it doesn't even remind me of interpol i thought of like a more 00s post punk durutti column with a driving rhythm section

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfF8qaliQbo

yeah it's all big drums and pretty melodic guitar parts. interpol songs were more choppy and aggressive.

feel like this is gonna be like the Savages thing where ppl keep going "they just sound like [one or more of three bands] what's the point" then a bunch of ppl come in and say "eh well they kinda have this and this and this going on too" and it just keeps going round and round

Nirvana songs are songs you can play on acoustic guitar or read at a poetry reading and they still work. There is a reason Cobain is considered a genius and everyone always misses the point. It's cos he was a brilliant songwriter.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 3, 2013 6:54 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't disagree but tbh that seems like wholly received and understood wisdom, assuming the Nirvana fans you're canvassing for opinions aren't teenagers hanging out in head shops

hahah

there's nothing divisive about DIIV or Savages except maybe how bland and anonymous they are. you mention Interpol's 'terrible' lyrics - pb's bizarre way with words is one of my favorite parts of that band. they're unique, confounding to some inspiring to others....there's nothing to talk about here, imo. it's like picking apart muzak.

and yet you keep talking

about the disparity btwn smith's grandiosity and the mediocrity of the music. there isn't anything controversial about the music itself. i wouldn't have started this thread if not for his comments. i wanted to see if anyone could make an argument for his potential greatness

how do you pronounce DIIV?

Nirvana is one the greatest band names, imo.

"dive"

it's not roman numerals?

They used to go by "Dive" but changed it to DIIV. Not sure if they added any meaning by spelling it that way and all caps beyond branding purposes.

i pronounce it like the html tag am0n references above

what he says in the pfork interview:

To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that his fame has reached.

makes it pretty clear that he knows his current place! unless you want to kill a guy for being honest about his ambitions, however unattainable they may be, i am still completely unclear what yr problem is.

xxxp

But they weren't Earl Sweatshirt, so I went back to the African music tent.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, July 2, 2013 3:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was there too, brah

o/

I don't know, I just can't imagine anyone that ends up "the voice of a generation" being "My five year goal is to be the voice of a generation". It's hard to imagine Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain or John Lennon saying anything close to that. Usually anytime those dudes were asked about their zeitgeist-embodying careers they were openly derisive of that very kind of statement. You read early Beatles interviews and their grand 5 year plan was to make enough money to open a shoe shop or something.

But yeah, one interview, who knows if this guy really thinks this or is trolling/playing along w music journalism expectations.

really taking that Kurt worship thing to a new level, huh?

Sky Ferreira and Zachary Cole Smith of DIIV were arrested in Saugerties, New York Friday night, as the Daily Freeman reports. Ferreira was arrested "on misdemeanor charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance and resisting arrest," while Smith was "charged with two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, one count of possession of stolen property and one count of aggravated unlicensed driving, all misdemeanors. He was also charged with the violations of unregistered motor vehicle, driving without insurance, unlicensed driver, and having an inadequate exhaust system," according to the Daily Freeman.

The paper reports that Smith was found with a "plastic bag containing 42 decks of heroin," while Ferreira "was found in possession of ecstasy and resisted arrest."

Police pulled their truck over "after the driver made several vehicle and traffic infractions." According to the Daily Freeman, "Police said a registration check showed the license plates on the truck were stolen and the driver, Smith, was wanted by the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office on an outstanding vehicle and traffic warrant."

The two were taken to Ulster County jail, and then released on bail. On Saturday, DIIV performed at BasilicaSoundScape, a music festival in Hudson, New York, co-presented by Pitchfork.

inadequate exhaust system... so irresponsible

it's kind of insane that this band still has a fanbase? literally one of the most middle-of-the-road bands to ever become P4K darlings. could barely secure a place on some lost 80's post-punk compilation

i guess he has a pretty rebloggable face

http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2014/12/15/diiv-bassist-called-out-over-hateful-comments-on-4chan/

just boot the fucker out, nobody gives a fuck who the actual bassist of diiv is

i agree with you. but i actually thought the statement seemed honest and was brave. sounds like places like 4chan can really get after someone, online and in real-life, who slights the forum publicly, and that's what that cole guy did.

So much talk around this band and only one mediocre record from 2012. The world is a strange place.

Maybe they should focus on making music instead.

So much talk around this band and only one mediocre record from 2012. The world is a strange place.

Maybe they should focus on making music instead.

― nostormo, Monday, December 15, 2014 3:00 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf they have been, this is a long interview/profile from this summer:

Technically, there’s no next record for people to know just yet. It’s not for lack of effort. DIIV recorded some material with JR White of Girls last summer, but the sessions were scrapped, and Smith returned to writing and recording DIIV’s music in isolation. He says he’s finished more than 150 songs in the two years since Oshin, and those are just the ones he still likes. Still others have been deleted or disappeared into the crevices of his hard drive. Many are saved under names like “Shitty Song” and ” Fuck You,” which doesn’t much help Smith remember which one is which. Smith presents the best of these creations to the band, supplying each member with a meticulously written part. Some of those parts are incredibly simple, to the extent that while rehearsing one song, Bailey can load up Yankees highlights on his phone with his left hand while jangling away on an open guitar string with his right. That’s just the way Smith writes — lots of independent bits and pieces that don’t amount to much on their own but, when deployed at the same time, fade into careening post-punk mirages.

[...]

At the center of the swirl is Smith, more coach than dictator but definitely in charge. “Try and stay on the root notes and 4 and 5,” he counsels his fellow guitarists. “If we’re all on dissonant notes at different times it just sounds like a mess.” When posed with questions about the band, the rest of the members mostly just direct me to him. He’s DIIV’s founder and unquestioned alpha dog — the one who selects which song to practice, who stops the practice runs midway through and decides to circle back and try again, who notices when one of his bandmates’ instruments is out of whack and instructs them to tune up. At one point he even reaches over and twists Bailey’s tuning peg for him. Smith exerts control over DIIV down to the most minuscule detail, in part because he has carefully studied what makes music tick and how bands ascend from obscurity to maintain lengthy careers. In part, though, it’s because everything else always seems so close to going off the rails.

http://www.stereogum.com/1693522/how-does-it-feel-diivs-zachary-cole-smith-rolls-on/franchises/interview/

“Try and stay on the root notes and 4 and 5,” he counsels his fellow guitarists. “If we’re all on dissonant notes at different times it just sounds like a mess.”

okay lol

he's baaaaaaaack

“I walked into 285 Kent the day [the record] came out, and all these people are like, ‘Hey man, congrats on Pitchfork. Best New Music!’ I felt like they thought I was better than them, or that they thought I had a big head. Like, ‘Why you?’ I never really felt like a true part of [the community] after that.”

http://www.thefader.com/2015/08/11/diiv-zachary-cole-smith-interview#./undefined?&_suid=143960834223706590706713149934

can't stand those drugs clichés of rock'n'roll, i'm certain Cole knows that's part of the attraction and I find it disgusting.

After Ferreira made bail, she spent several traumatic hours waiting for Smith, completely alone inside the sparsely furnished one-floor Catskill house without food, heat, or internet.

http://www.milhist.net/images/2000YardStare.jpg

LOL quiddities and agonies of the drooling class

and he was just like, ‘Shut the fuck up you motherfucking cocksucker! I’m going to go smoke cigarettes.’ Everyone’s jaw dropped, like, ‘Woah, what is that person?”

Smoking cigarettes and throwing rocks at cars in a Walmart parking lot, how is society today still standing? Such rebelliousness.

He’ll tell you that when tripping in groups, he prefers to drop the LSD a few minutes before everyone else so that he can be “the leader,”

Sounds like a horrible person to be around while tripping tbh.

how cool it would be if you could be as successful as nirvana but not actually make any songs

like photoshoots, yeah. but artistic credentials?

that shit's hard work

"The court-ordered detox was brutal[...]To get through it, he re-read journalist Michael Azerrad’s Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana"

" In the car earlier, we talked about Montage of Heck, the recently released documentary that stitches together rare home-movie footage of the Nirvana frontman with rotoscope-animated reenactments of his early life. Smith watched it with his mother, who he says felt uncomfortable because she had trouble separating the platinum-blond boy on screen from her own son."

holy moly, how this is a 30-year-old man in the 2010s not a 15-year-old boy in 1994...

haven't read the piece yet but all these pull quotes are unreal. has this guy even made any interesting music? i heard the first record and it was okay – made perfect sense that it was a beach fossils offshoot.

and did that hateful bassist really never get the boot?

totally object to when people belittle or demonize other's substance abuse issues, ie when people are like lol this guy takes heroin because he wants to be like kurt cobain or because he's a rock cliche or whatevs. think there's enough moral outrage at drug users as it is tbh. little strange when the music press reports hard drug use as if it is really egregious and transgressive (and sorta cool), and not just like a common thing that many, many people from all walks of life engage in, that is not remotely glamorous or weird, and which countless popular musicians have been involved in since forever.

with that proviso i have to say his obsession and identification with kurt cobain is deeply bizarre in its juvenility, even when you take into consideration possible arrested development arising from his privileged waspy background and extended-adolescence of being in bands throughout his 20s.

diiv's music is p ok with me, not actively a fan but it sounds like a bunch of the 80s indie i grew up with so whatevs. too derivative i guess.

dude is nonstop lols/eyerolls, i guess, but i loved the album and they played a bunch of new stuff at a show i saw recently and they sounded great

Not demonizing his substance abuse issue but the way he is glamorizing use. If he wants to get clean then good for him and I hope he does.

But if you are a public figure and think doing hard drugs is cool and something that should be promoted then eff you. Moral outrage not at drug users but drug promoters.

I don't know maybe he doesn't spend all his time talking about his drug use and the times he thought about his drug use, and it just comes out that way in music media, cos they have always fetishized hard drugs.

new album is garbage

Haha

I like it.

It's a band that plays dreamy same-y songs and they have a new album full of slightly less same-y songs than the last set.

If you liked them the first time around, you'll probably like the new one too?

they're a poor man's Interpol, the guy can't write lyrics so he buries his voice in the mix

So you just don't like the band. That's all I was trying to clarify.

It's funny that apparently only the bad songwriters intentionally bury their vocals in the mix for that reason, but only good songwriters that do this do it for other reasons.

i don't think that's the case, i like Avey Tare a lot and he obscures or over-processes his vocals way too much. Bob Mould's vocals are way too low in the mix on the SST Hüskers records. It's a stylistic choice for ZCS, I don't think he considers himself a bad lyricist.

Right, I was reacting to your post that implied that very thing: "the guy can't write lyrics so he buries his voice in the mix".

well the guitars + rhythm section sound fantastic on the new dive record, and so i'll be listening to it again

early favorite is "healthy moon" which is the most lucid and beautiful song on the new one

album is up on Spotify, sounds pretty lovely.

super nice all around. the track with sky on vocals is amazing.

New album sounds so familiar but can't place the references (besides some of the MBV haze).
Anyway, a bit samey but I really like it

Just heard 'Blankenship' and it's up my alley. How does it compare to the rest of the album?

I know there aren't many DIIV fans on ILM, but I really like them. New album due out in April, Frog in Boiling Water.

https://diiv.bandcamp.com/album/frog-in-boiling-water

very '90s fashion in the video, which also features Fred Durst:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSJRo-DOeQ

Via spending a lot of times in thrift stores from 1987-1996, I can practically smell their outfits vividly.

The middle guy looks like present-day Beck cosplaying as his early-90s self.

The outro guitar lead (comes in ~3m55s) is a shameless cop of the verse hook/melody of MBV's "I Only Said".

I think it's obvious enough that they're expecting people to connect the dots though I do wonder if Shields is in the songwriting credits.