How an American indie group created a soundtrack for societal collapse: ‘It’s like we’re the band playing on the Titanic’

A brazen assassination attempt. A spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Dank memes about J.D. Vance and a couch. Climate disasters. Kamala IS brat.

In the chaotic heart of summer 2024, it’s natural to wonder: how do we move through the exhausting news cycle without succumbing to cynicism or despair?

Few contemporary artists are as adept at reflecting the uneasy realities of this political moment — nor as comfortable wading into its distinct absurdity — as the American rock band DIIV, whose fourth album “Frog in Boiling Water” is a soundtrack of societal collapse; one that captures both the numbing banality of doomscrolling and the terrifying thrill of gazing into the abyss.

“It’s like we’re the band playing on the Titanic,” joked frontman Zachary Cole Smith during a Zoom call ahead of DIIV’s upcoming Toronto performance at the Concert Hall.

“As citizens, and as musicians, there’s this sense of absolute powerlessness and it can be just crushing.”

“Frog in Boiling Water” represents an effort to grapple with that sense of hopelessness.

“Making art for us is an exercise in trying to take control of what we have power over and what we can exert change on,” said Smith. “We can try to create a mirror of the world and expose it for what it is.”

The result is a dark but thoroughly enjoyable record, one that finds deliverance through the distorted prism of ‘90s shoegaze.

On the sludgy lead single “Brown Paper Bag” — a song that pays homage to both the Melvins and My Bloody Valentine — the band moves through the muck of capitalist burnout, finding emotional release in a slow-motion guitar solo that drips like molten lava.

“The rotating villains / Profit off suffering / A doomsday machine glitch / Is our new god,” Smith sings on the album’s opener “In Amber,” his voice obscured beneath a haze of reverb and droning guitars that shift and totter with the colossal weight of a melting glacier. “I can’t look away.”

It was mid-afternoon when I spoke to the four members of DIIV, who were in various states of waking up, their tour bus parked in a “random parking lot” in Tampa Bay, Fla.

As we waited for everyone to join the call, I mentioned that it was rare for an entire band to show up for a Zoom interview.

“I think it’s just in keeping with how we made the record,” explained multi-instrumentalist Colin Caulfield, who joined the band as a keyboardist and guitarist in 2013, but has played bass since 2017. “This one was so democratic compared to the other ones — like all four of us were really involved.”

Formed in Brooklyn in 2011, DIIV — pronounced “dive,” by the way — started out as Smith’s solo project. Their acclaimed 2012 debut “Oshin” is often cited as a high point in dream pop, a genre known for its blurry but lush sonic textures, and popularized by bands like Cocteau Twins and Beach House.

The next several years marked a notoriously tumultuous time for the band but, despite controversies and several personnel changes, DIIV managed to produce two stellar albums: “Is the Is Are” (2016) was a deeply personal exploration of Smith’s struggle with addiction that mined the sounds of post-punk and krautrock, while 2019’s “Deceiver” — a clear-eyed portrait of Smith’s eventual treatment and recovery — was a darker, heavier record, which pulled from the muddled sounds of grunge and slowcore.

Arriving five years later, “Frog in Boiling Water” marks a distinctly new era for DIIV, both in its wholehearted embrace of shoegaze and its move away from the enveloping solipsism of their earlier work.

“We’ve been a band for 13, almost 14 years, and we’ve changed a lot as people,” said Smith. “It only makes sense that the music would change.”

“I can’t imagine if we were still making songs like ‘Oshin’ and going out and playing that music right now,” added guitarist Andrew Bailey, who has been with the band since 2011. “That would feel absolutely crazy, like we were faking or something.”

The album’s evocative but largely ambiguous lyrics represent the band’s antipathy to the idea of an artist making a “solutions-based” record.

“We’re creating a language to speak about this stuff, rather than leading people in a specific direction,” said drummer Ben Newman, who joined the band in 2015. “I feel like a lot of times making art is a way for the artist to try to make sense of what’s happening in the world.”

“I think that’s true,” said Smith. “We don’t have faith in the electoral system. Like, there’s nothing we can do within the realm of (electoral democracy) to stop the genocide in Gaza. So to propose something within that system feels false. We want to expose the world for what it is and then people can draw their conclusions.”

It’s a gloomy concept for a rock album, but fortunately the guys in DIIV seem to possess a strong sense of humour. Over the past several months, the band has crafted a satirical meta-narrative to accompany the rollout of “Frog in Boiling Water” and the current tour: the music video for “Brown Paper Bag” features a fake clip of the band performing on “Saturday Night Live.”

The single “Soul-net” — which is about the temptation of finding solace in conspiracy theories — was released alongside a “Web 1.0” site filled with paranoid, red-pilled internet discourse.

Just before our conversation, the band launched the “DIIV Endorsement Project,” a website offering to “amplify your political or product campaigns” using custom graphics and AI-generated video endorsements.

“Hello, this is Zachary Cole Smith, from critically acclaimed rock band DIIV,” the band’s frontman says awkwardly in the campaign’s video, which features an eerie soundtrack and a nightmarish montage of images, from politicians to oil rigs to Disneyland. “I wholeheartedly endorse this product or political candidate.”

It’s a clever bit, which pokes fun at the increasingly blurred line between pop culture and politics, and the grim spectacle of celebrities lining up to lend their support to morally bankrupt politicians. It’s also a cynical critique of the dire financial prospects of working as an independent artist in today’s music industry.

“There’s a lot of truth in satire,” said Caulfield, “and there’s a lot of sincerity in there, too.”

It’s been over 30 years since the halcyon days of shoegaze, an era defined by the hazy, fuzzed out sounds of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive or Lush. But thanks to an organic resurgence on TikTok, the genre has never been more popular.

Indeed, according to reporting by Stereogum, streams and searches for shoegaze bands — both old and new — have exploded over the past couple of years.

The phenomenon, Caulfield said, “is 100 per cent real. There are so many young kids at our shows now, it’s like an entire new generation.”

“Nah bro, it’s a psyop from the big shoegaze industry,” Smith joked.

“But obviously it is good for us,” Smith continued. “We’ve never been genre purists or wanted to root ourselves in shoegaze, but there’s something really cool about being in this little zeitgeist thing that is happening right now.

“It’s almost as if there’s something specific in the gauziness or the catharsis of the sound that hits at a subconscious or metaphysical level, and it’s really tapping into something, especially younger people,” Smith added.

“Rock music has gone through so many births and deaths, you know, and for there to be, like, a moment of rebirth again, it’s beautiful to see.”

Caulfield says DIIV’s tour, which incorporates elements of the meta-narrative into their live show, has felt “vaguely therapeutic,” a chance to process the chaos of the world in real time alongside their audience.

“Just the other day, a fan was talking to us and he was like, ‘The album you guys made just feels like now,’” he added. “He couldn’t really put it into words, but I was like, ‘That’s the best thing you could say to us. That’s what we tried to do.’”

“Kamala IS Frog,” interjected Smith, sparking a wave of laughter.

“Jesus,” concluded Caulfield.