DIIV

DIIV released their latest album Frog in Boiling Water last year on 24th May. Since then, DIIV have experienced a true whirlwind – the highs of releasing a critically-acclaimed album that was beloved by fans and touring to sold-out crowds worldwide, all to be met with the heartbreaking events of the wildfires in California earlier this year that resulted in Zachary Cole Smith losing his home.

As the band approaches the one-year anniversary of their latest record, DIIV return this week to share their first new song since its release, with the highly emotional track “Return of Youth”. See below for a poignant statement from Cole on the song, his family, and the video which shows the horrific destruction of his home in Altadena.

"Hi

DIIV has a new song out today, “Return Of Youth”. Sorry for the long statement

‘Frog’ was an album that focused our gaze outward at the world around us. It captured a series of snapshots of our condition, in confusion and disgust and awe.

The writing period for this album was part of a beautiful time in my life, as we prepared and waited for our first child to be born. That beauty was cut with a profound existential dilemma: how can we bring a child into this world?

The common thread running through the fragmented world of the album was hope. We've talked about it a bit. Real hope, false hope, something to give your life meaning. It's an individual journey. I found it in parenthood, but you can find it anywhere you want.

"Return Of Youth" was written before our son was born, a projection, zooming in until the larger existential dilemmas were out of frame. Where "Fender On The Freeway" found peace in the patterns of a gigantic macro, this one finds it in a mundane and simple micro. I imagined seeing myself through the eyes of my child, a rebirth of sorts, laced with fear and insecurity, discovering beauty and serenity together in the simplest places.

At the very beginning of the year my family and I lost our home and everything we owned to the wildfires in Altadena, CA. We had been preparing for the birth of our second son. We were living in the beautiful world at home that I had imagined in this song, and at once that world was gone.

When we re-approached this song to finally release it, I couldn't help but hear the song differently in the aftermath. What makes a home? Can you ever escape the outside world? Is hope just a delusion? Is anyone actually prepared to be a parent? How CAN you bring a child into this world?

I found again the big questions were irrelevant. You just keep on living I guess. Life happens on life's terms.

Anyway, make of the song and the video whatever you want, it's just a snapshot, albeit a more personal one this time.

Enjoy.

Cole"

"bona fide legends of 21st century shoegaze"
-So Young

"their best yet"
-Record Collector

"both thrilling and thoughtful" ★★★★½
-DIY

"as gorgeous a record as you’ll hear this year." ★★★★½ 
-CLASH

"Frog in Boiling Water is exquisite, challenging, and constantly evolving, a fitting description of the band behind it. It’s the soundtrack of our times" ★★★★½
-Far Out

"An ideal fusion of grit-in-the-gears grunge and spacey shoegaze! ★★★★ 
-Uncut

"Frog In Boiling Water is an exploration of persistence and resilience, marked by a meticulous fusion of breakbeats, haunting guitars and reflective lyrics." ★★★★
-NARC

“There are only great DIIV records, but I think this might be their best one…Every detail is so perfectly calibrated. You just feel that you are in the presence of a band that knows exactly what it’s set out to do…The resulting album is quite breathtaking”
-NPR Music

"The title track of the coming album by the Brooklyn band Diiv is a hazy, droney, baleful assessment of society’s prospects, envisioning only decay and collapse... Distorted, steady-strummed shoegaze guitars and a chord progression that stays unsettled sustain the desolate mood."
-The New York Times

"their most mature and best album, a sign that this is a band in it for the long haul, one that has already built a considerable artistic legacy but is disinclined to rest on its laurels"
-Stereogum (Album of the Week)

"brooding yet gorgeous shoegaze…a lush meditation on how to keep going as the world ends in slow motion"
-Vulture

"In the fashion of shoegaze’s more maximal strains, an undercarriage of funk and breakbeats helps transmute the angst of Zachary Cole Smith’s lullaby vocals into the ultimate catharsis."
-Pitchfork

“DIIV have merged their hazy, beautifully layered sonics with lyrics that are sharply political, taking on social and economic injustice, militarism, environmental destruction, complacency, and—at the root of it all—capitalism.”
-Esquire

 “Their most meticulously crafted album to date”
-Northern Transmissions

"one of rock's most impressionistic acts"
-GRAMMY.com

"the most flat-out beautiful music of DIIV’s career."
-UPROXX

"the most tense, subtle, and cerebral music of their whole career."
-SPIN

"Frog in Boiling Water is their most cohesive work. It's a true slow burn of an album, capturing listeners by degrees and echoing the band's subtle yet dramatic growth since Oshin."
-Brooklyn Vegan

"they double down on their version of shoegaze and dream-pop—which has always had a bit more darkness in its veins than that of their contemporaries."
-Paste

“DIIV have always plucked beauty out from the pits of hell… Frog In Boiling Water suggests they’re up to the task”
-The FADER