"PEDALS CAN AFFECT YOUR PLAYING SO MUCH"

Shoegaze stars DIIV have abandoned their roots as a live band to redraw their sonic landscapes - with a vast array of effects at the heart of their songwriting

- Phil Weller

Despite being hailed as modern day shoegaze luminaries, New York-based band DIIV never felt that they became fully immersed in that scene until they wrote and recorded their 2019 album Deceiver. The creation of its follow up, meanwhile, saw the band embark on a four-year challenge to push their sound – and themselves – to new heights by reaffirming what it is that defines the DIIV sound.

The result, fourth album Frog In Boiling Water, glistens with evolution and invention; floating yet haunted guitar lines, ethereal textures and weighty introspection permeate its 10 tracks. So, as the band’s tour bus pulled into a suspiciously rain-free Manchester, Total Guitar caught up with guitarists Zachary Cole Smith (known ubiquitously as Cole) and Andrew Bailey to discover how their sonic explorations shaped the new record, and what this means for their extensive pedal collections…

How did the writing process for Frog In Boiling Water differ from Deceiver?

Andrew: With Deceiver, we knew exactly what type of record we wanted to make; we were all painting with the same approved colours. With this one, we were constantly asking, ‘What about this other colour?’

Cole: Adding new colours to the palette was the fun part, but a huge lesson that we learned was that removing stuff and focusing the record is really hard. There’s only really so much space in the songs, so we did equal parts adding and subtracting.

What were the key additions?