Update: Zachary Cole Smith has shared a post on DIIV’s Tumblr discussing the new song, “Under the Sun,” and their upcoming record Is the Is Are.
“Approaching the subject of drugs in art, on a rock and roll album especially, is a special kind of complicated. The drug issues of so many archetypal rock stars have been so glamorized for so many decades, while also throughout history variously registering as being one of rock and roll’s most thoroughly exhausted clichés,” he wrote.
In discussing my own history openly and completely, I hoped to remove any attempt at seeming “cool” or “glamorous” and tried instead to totally humanize it. If you’ve watched the end of “Montage of Heck” or listened to Elliott Smith playing live at the Riviera in Chicago (or lots of other late-era live Elliott), you probably don’t see Kurt or Elliott’s drug issues as being anything other than what they were: just plain sad. Addicts are sick people.
But I never wanted this record to be mired too deep in darkness either. My life wasn’t all drugs and addiction, rehab/relapse, and sickness. I also met and fell in love with someone.
Read the full note here.
DIIV‘s singles from their forthcoming sophomore LP, Is the Is Are, have mostly favored darkness. Whether that’s in lyrical depictions of addiction (“Dopamine”) or space vacuum production (“Mire (Grant’s Song)”), each issuance has felt a little dimmer, a little bleaker than the rest — so they return with a celestial, heavenly light called “Under the Sun.”
Like past efforts this new single relies on krautrock’s mechanical rhythms as a springboard to the stars. Guitar lines that streak and tear across the night-sky vastness of his warped indie-pop instrumentals, and frontman Zachary Cole Smith’s vocals shimmer in the midst of their haze. It’s a brief light in the midst of overwhelming darkness.
Listen here in advance of Is the Is Are’s February 5 release.
