Put a band in tailored suits for every photo shoot, every video, even the video calls with journalists, and the joke lands before a single note plays. DIIV have worn the uniform of middle management throughout the rollout for ‘ZIRP!’, their fifth album, and the title explains the costume. It is shorthand for the zero-interest-rate years, that long stretch when money cost nothing and everything, apparently, was worth a fortune. Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield and Ben Newman have always specialized in the sound of something lovely going bad. Now they have a target for the rot, and a producer who knows how to make rot sparkle.
That producer is A. G. Cook, the PC Music label founder best known for his work alongside Charli XCX, and handing him the entire record was the boldest gamble of the band’s career. Guitar groups from Brooklyn tend to treat pop gloss as a contagion. DIIV opened the door instead, took its coat, and let it rearrange the interior. The cathedral smear of ‘Deceiver’ (Captured Tracks, 2019), and the cold-water dread of ‘Frog in Boiling Water’ (Fantasy, 2024), have not vanished. They have simply been drafted into service of hooks, of drums that land like they mean it, of choruses built for rooms with balconies. Bands rarely get to sound this expensive while sounding this unsettled.
“The Fountain” opens the record and sets the terms of engagement. The guitars are thick with effects, a sharp riff breaks through the haze, and the chorus sings “poison” in a sweet voice that’s obviously intentional. The song sets beauty against something toxic. As a statement of purpose it is nearly perfect, and it also works as a trap, because the pleasure it offers is exactly the kind the album keeps asking listeners to distrust. “Kid” comes next and confirms the intent: this is a group chasing bigger audiences and declining to apologize for it. DIIV spent a decade getting credit for mood and haze, and now they sound like they want people in the room.
It suits them. “Dare Me” is the sharpest example, a taunt set to melody, built so that a few thousand people could shout along without having heard it before. At three minutes, ‘Trillions’ is the shortest song here, and it’s short on purpose. A number that large deserves no more than a brisk, slightly hysterical sprint. Three of the four advance singles sit within the first six slots, so the front half spends its best material early, and anyone who streamed the previews all autumn will recognize the album’s strongest hand before it deals it. This comes down to sequencing, not songwriting, but it makes the first few tracks sound like highlights from a record that hasn’t really begun.
Some tracks highlight where the album gets stranger and, at its best, funnier. “When The Glow Came For Us,” the longest on the tracklist, and the extra room matters. Smith’s voice has always been less a lead instrument than another smudge of color, and here the simmer lets that blur do real work. “The Crash” takes its name from the most obvious calamity of the cash-soaked era and wisely refuses to wink about it. “Us Against You” and “Evangelizer” turn toward the language of tribes and true believers, the preachers and pitchmen who flourish whenever the money flows free. Then comes the closing run of “Underground,” “My Star” and “Idiot In The Sky,” a title that deflates its own grandeur with perfect timing. A record named with an exclamation point deserves an ending that can laugh at the person doing the shouting.
Not every flourish lands. The final third leans on glitchy digital chatter and stuttering vocal fragments, and here Cook’s fingerprints press hardest on the glass. Some of it is fun, a flash of mischief from a band that’s been deadly serious since its first EP. Some of it is seasoning on a dish that didn’t need any. The guitars are stacked, shimmering and gloriously hard to tell apart, and they don’t need electronic commentary. When the production gets out of the way and the four players just roar, the music soars. When it fusses, the album flinches.
Still, the nerve is what counts. Smith has spent fifteen years making records about compulsion, damage and the slow surrender of self-control, often in whispers. ‘ZIRP!’ keeps the subject matter and raises the volume, trading private anguish for public satire. The politics are not delivered with a lecture. They show up dressed as pop, the way the best political songs always have. The chorus lodges in your head first. A few days later, the words sink in, and so does the unease.
There is real craft in how little the band surrenders to the producer’s reputation. Cook’s work is famous for neon and chaos, yet this is no PC Music record with guitars pasted on top. It’s still four people playing in a room, but the room has been scrubbed, polished and rigged with stadium lights. That’s tricky to pull off. Go too glossy and the songs vanish; go too murky and you’re back to regular shoegaze comfort. DIIV stay on the line most of the time, and the few wobbles feel ambitious rather than careless.
Anyone who’s felt that dread of watching a boom turn into a bust, will find a record that gets it and dresses it up as a party. It’s loud, bright, and often thrilling. The suits are a disguise, but the songs underneath really do want to be heard.
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