DIIV have announced their new album Frog In Boiling Water will be out on 24 May through Fantasy. It’s their first since 2018’s Deceiver and was made over a tumultuous four year period that saw band dynamics frayed and re-cast, resulting in a more collaborative outfit.
The album’s title refers to the fact that a frog put directly into boiling water would jump out, but if a frog is in the water and it is heated to boiling it will not jump out but instead boil to death. DIIV say:
“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.”
The first taste of the new record comes in the form of “Brown Paper Bag” a colosssal, slow-burning shoegaze number. As ever, it comes paired with Zachary Cole Smith’s minimal, nihilistic musings, setting the scene by admitting: “Cost me nothing to say / My mind’s at ease / When I’m in pain.” From there we move slovenly through the city streets, observing the crumbling of society while DIIV’s playing burns brighter, higher and hotter all around. “Where will I go?”, Cole questions at the song’s finale, before “Brown Paper Bag” lapses into its atmospheric and beautiful instrumental conclusion.
Watch the video for “Brown Paper Bag” below or find it on streamers.
DIIV’s new album Frog In Boiling Water arrives on 24 May through Fantasy (pre-order/save). You can find the band on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bandcamp.
