DIIV : Zirp!

DIIV set the bar pretty high for themselves with their 2012 debut Oshin. Touching on shoegaze, dream pop, and jangly guitar noodling of early 90s college rock, guitarist/frontman Zachary Cole Smith showed promise for some kind of shoegaze revival. Is The Is Are soon followed in 2016 with plenty of ambition and lots of personal baggage as well. Three quarters of the hour-long, seventeen song runtime worked, while the rest felt like b-side fodder.

Since then the band continues to roll on to varying degrees of success. While never reaching the heights of their debut, Smith and the band have made solid records like the heavier and darker Deceiver and their most recent release 2024s Frog In Boiling Water. While varying sonically all the records remains solidly DIIV-esque.

We now have their brand new Zirp!. Album titles rarely sound as precise as Zirp!, which consists of super-produced, sonically modern songs produced by British producer A.G. Cook. While still sounding reminiscent of DIIV, the studio wizardry and futuristic touches to the songs tends to take away from, rather than add to the songs and band’s charm.

So the positives here are that this is still very much a DIIV record. During the best moments the production brings out the poppier elements of the songs. “The Fountain” sounds like My Bloody Valentine all shined up and pretty with it’s fuzzy guitar parts and quasi-futuristic zings and pangs in the background. Zachary Cole Smith sounds as distant and indifferent as ever. A breakdown in the middle of the track sounds more Medicine that MBV, which I think is a good thing. “Kid” is lovely and melancholy, but there’s an almost Silversun Pickups vibe here that hints at shakier waters ahead.

Elsewhere “Dare Me” dabbles in noisier 90s shoegaze territory, while “Us Against You” opens with a Suicide vibe but quickly falls into middling territory that sound more like lesser 90s Cure. “Underground” sounds like a cross between Garbage and Depeche Mode, so take that how you will. “Idiot In The Sky” might be the worst moment on Zirp! which turns these shoegaze/dream pop titans into little more than a ballad-writing alt-pop Sirius satellite band.

I do get the reasoning here for bringing in Charlie XCX’s super producer to spruce up DIIVs sonic footprint. I think it could have worked to their advantage had they still kept the airiness of the band’s sound. Unfortunately I think Cook took a good record and turned it into a shiny toy for the masses. There’s still songs to enjoy, but Zirp! feels like a step down from what came before.