DIIV on the making of ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ and upcoming Aus tour

DIIV. Photo credit: Louie Kovatch (@louiekovatch)

Jordan Royal (Sonic Alien 4ZZZ) caught up with Zachary Cole Smith of DIIV to chat about the long process of making their fourth album, ‘Frog In Boiling Water’, touring around the world since the release, how some of its themes sit with him now and their upcoming Australian tour, coming to Meanjin for Open Season on June 14.

Interview aired on Sonic Alien 4ZZZ 21 May 2025.

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Jordan: I’m joined by Cole Smith from DIIV, ahead of their Australian tour. Thanks so much for joining me, I'm really excited for your Open Season show here in Brisbane on the 14th of June, so thanks so much for coming and chatting.

Cole: Thank you, very excited.

Jordan: I want to start by having a chat about Frog in Boiling Water, because it's your fourth and most recent studio album. And it is so amazing and beautiful, but when I was reading about it, it obviously was years in the making and it was a bit of a struggle to make. So I was wondering now that it's been out in the world for a year, how you sit with it and how it sits with you now compared to when you first released it?

Cole: I don't know, it definitely was a struggle to make. We kind of - every decision that we made felt so loaded, because it's a band, we're making music and it's a creative outlet, but it's also our job and there's financial anxieties that come into play and the family dynamic within the band, and all of these things make the decisions hard to make. And so I guess with a bit of retrospect, I wish we'd been easier on ourselves maybe. Something happens when you start worrying about your career and success and stuff, and you want to do the best you can, make this perfect album. But those don't exist, really, and you can't force it. So I guess I'd probably go a bit easier, but I think we're happy with the record we made.

Jordan: It's such a beautiful record, as I said before. And I guess, yeah, having that retrospect and being like, oh, just be easier on yourself, it's so easy then. But yeah, it's weird, the entanglement of all these different things and making music. Colin described your writing process before as chasing a sound that you felt like already existed, like the final DIIV song was out there somewhere. You just had to catch up to it. I was wondering what that looked like in practice for building the Sonic World of Frog. Was it a gradual piecing together or was it a back and forth, scrapping, rebuilding, recalibrating type of process?

Cole: Yeah, I mean, it was infinite revisions, I guess. There's this copy of this book called Songwriters on Songwriting that was in the studio that we were reading. And I think we talked about it at the time, but there's an interview with Leonard Cohen and there's an interview with Bob Dylan, you know - like the two greatest lyricists ever. And their approaches were so opposite each other that it was like, I don't even know if we could make sense of it at the time. But there's Leonard Cohen kind of like endlessly revising like a single line. And there's Bob Dylan kind of like stream of consciousness, just like making the stuff. And it was like, I don't know, it was hard to take the lesson at the time. And we just were like, just endlessly revising and, you know, like, yeah, chasing something that doesn't exist. It was hard to do, you know, kind of like just grabbing at the air. So like making the making the songs was like, they would kind of come from wherever. But then, then kind of flushing them out and filling them out as they as you like, build more and more on the song, it becomes you like, either lose sight of where you started, or it has too many ideas or become something else. It was like, definitely a struggle.

Jordan: That's so true. Hey, I feel like, yeah, as you gradually add more and more, it can become a bit like lost in the process. It sort of takes me to my next question is that Frog was completely done independently, like no label was fully self funded, which would have afforded some creative freedom, I guess, and some pressure. But you've spoken about texture and textural sounds being key to DIIV and this album feels like a collage of different references. There's bird sounds and there's muffled conversations. And I just love every part of it. I feel like when you listen to it, you hear something different every time. What drew you to explore those more abstract sonic elements? Was it that creative, like freedom that allowed you to go more left field at certain points?

Cole: No, I don't think it really was that as much as just like, kind of what we were listening to musically. And, you know, like, adding stuff to songs is like really fun. And you can just like keep adding and adding and adding. And then it just becomes like, you know, there's only Chris - Chris, the producer that we worked with, was like, there's only so much like you can only hear so many like frequencies or whatever, you know, like sound becomes oversaturated and too full. And so the hard part was kind of like deleting back all the stuff that we just like kept throwing on the songs. But Ben and Bailey, two of the other guys in the band, are really into collecting cassette tapes. And Bailey will just like go buy a bunch of cassette tapes and like listen to them slow down and backwards and recorded and kind of make these collages. And so that kind of as a hobby, but it felt like something that was really fun to tap into. That was like probably the most fun part of the whole process was like, we've been listening to a lot of like sample based music and kind of trying to fit like sampling techniques into our sound was really fun.

Jordan: That is so cool. That cassette, like listening to it backwards, listening out for different things. That's so awesome. But that because that collage, I guess, aspect definitely comes through so well when you're listening, like you pick up different things each time. It's so much fun.

The central meaning behind the metaphor, I guess, behind the record was sort of drawn from the story of B, which touches on this like numbness to dysfunction and the slow horror of capitalism, which I think is quite relevant. And now that you've lived with these themes for the past year and like over the course of making the record and sat with them as you've literally toured around the world, how do they resonate with you now?

Cole: I mean, like, you know, we're like we're living through like a crumbling empire, you know, and I think things have just like descended into madness and like complete dysfunction, like even more so, you know, like I guess we could see the writing on the wall for a but it feels kind of the same, you know, like the songs still feel like they have the same targets, you know, the same, you know, capitalism still is the status quo, you know?

Jordan: Yeah, I guess touring around the world and just seeing, I guess, like these themes still come up all around the world would have been a bit of a strange process. But you also released a remix of the EP in April this year with some artists like Mount Kimbie, which is amazing and Minor Science. These songs have been with you in so many different forms for so many different years. So what's it like hearing them through someone else's lens? And I guess, did any remixes surprise you a little bit?

Cole: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's really fun. It's something that we've always wanted to do. We're like massive fans of Depeche Mode and going through their catalogue. They had kind of like these whole remix albums that they would do. And it just feels like such a cool exercise in collaboration. And we were so deliberate and precise about making these songs. And then hearing somebody just kind of rip them apart and build something from the raw materials is really cool and refreshing, especially to hear how good they are. You know, it's really cool. It's like an act of destruction, too, you know, which I think is kind of what we needed.

Jordan: It would have been really fun getting, I guess, the file back and hearing it for the first time and just hearing the complete different interpretation. It would have been such an amazing experience.

I wanted to shift a little bit to talk about live setting and live setup. You mentioned before one of the big challenges with Frog was that every decision felt loaded and there was this perfectionistic aspect to making a decision and it being seemingly forever. But live, you can play around a little bit and have some more fun, especially with the little sonic details on Frog. So I was wondering, how's it been to perform it live? And if you guys have had, I guess, fun taking a new song and making it into a different shape or a different version live?

Cole: I totally hear your perspective and I wish that it was that way. It is fun to play the songs live and it's fun to redo it in a live setting. But that same perfectionist mentality is all over the live show, too. It's very techie and precise, the way that we built the show. It’s like really - we worked really hard to make it sound really good live. I don't know. Yeah, I wish it was that same kind of thing with the remixes of tearing it apart and making something. But we wanted to be as faithful to the record as possible. And so bringing all that texture and all that stuff, there's kind of these gear things that are boring to talk about, I guess. But it's very techie.

Jordan: Yeah. And I guess, I mean, there's so many different layers, there's so many things happening with Frog and Boiling Water that I guess that might be a little bit, as you said, perfectionistic to bring to a live setting, too. But I'm really, really excited to see your show in Brisbane on the 14th for Open Season. But you're kicking off your Australian tour on the 4th of June. And it's been nearly 10 years since you guys have been back here because you had to cancel your 2020 tour. So it was 2016 when you were last here. So what are you guys most looking forward to about this run of shows?

Cole: I mean, just the fact that we haven't been there in so long, I think there's an excitement. There's a lot of songs we haven't played for people there. And so we're excited to go, but we're also, it's cool for us that people are excited to see us and that it's all this new thing for you. Because we play a lot of shows, but not in Australia.

Jordan: True. Because, yeah, you guys also haven't toured Deceiver here. So I'm really excited to see both albums.

But thank you so much for your time and taking the time to chat. So thank you so much, Cole.

Cole: Of course - Yeah, thank you.

Listen to ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ below.