Today DIIV—Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, Ben Newman and Zachary Cole Smith—announce their fourth album, Frog in boiling water. Produced by Chris Coady and scheduled for release on May 24 via Fantasy Records. Frog in boiling water It was a four-year process that nearly broke the band before the album was completed.
Aiming to push their sound, make a record that challenged them, and treat the band as a democracy for the first time, DIIV began an ambitious journey, both individually and collectively. This trip left their relationships with each other frayed, with many complex dynamics of family, friendship, and finances tangled, along with suspicions, resentments, bruised egos, and anxious questions. They finally found their way, and the result is ten songs that mine new lyrical and musical depth, those two halves reflecting each other within a reflective and immersive whole. It is a hypnotic testament to enduring, to imagining anything else on the other side while you remain here, in the slowly warming water of this moment.
Frog in boiling waterBoth the title and the songs of the album refer to “The Boiling Frog” in The Story of B by Daniel Quinn. The band explains: “If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, of course it will frantically try to get out. But if you gently place it in a pot of warm water and lower the heat, the frog will sink into a quiet stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and soon, with a smile on its face, it will allow itself to boil. until he dies without resisting.”
“We understand the metaphor to be about a slow, sickening, overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under late-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we have perhaps 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 that we believe highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, feels like.”
Along with the announcement of Frog in Boiling Water, DIIV today shares the album's lead single, “Brown Paper Bag.” “Brown Paper Bag” channels despondency and anguish into an exquisite intersection of dream-pop and post-rock, a wispy melody that extends from a foundation of steel. Listen to the song now BELOW:
List of songs from Frog in Boiling Water
1. In amber
2. Brown paper bag
3. Raining on your pillow
4. Frog in boiling water
5. Everyone out
6. Mirrored
7. Grim the drums
8. Little birds
9. Soul Network
10. Mudflaps on the highway
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