After teasing new material, DIIV have announced their fourth album, “Frog In Boiling Water”, and released the single ‘Brown Paper Bag’ to mark the news.
The song picks up from where their 2019 album, “Deceiver,” left off, combining sludgy and shoegaze elements with a touch of country and 1990s alternative to cap things off. A slow-burning composition featuring crunching guitars, a piercing but ethereal lead line, and Zachary Cole Smith’s typically whispered vocals, .
“Frog in Boiling Water” is the second album from the latest iteration of DIIV, comprised of vocalist and guitarist Cole Smith, guitarist Andrew Bailey, bassist Colin Caulfield, and drummer Ben Newman.
The title of the new record is a reference to Daniel Quinn’s 1996 novel, The Story of B. The band explain: “If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”
They continue: “We understand the metaphor to be one about a slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal. That’s the boiling water and we are the frogs. The album is more or less a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”
Produced by Chris Coady, it arrives on May 24th via Fantasy.
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