Frog In Boiling Water - DIIV: Review
DIIV
are a shoegaze outfit from Brooklyn that have been active for over a decade now. After falling in love with their debut album Oshin I wasn't crazy about their second record. Thankfully in 2019 their third album arrived and I was much more fond of it. Given the full 5 years that have passed since then I was excited to hear yet another new rendition of the bands shoegaze sound. On Frog In Boiling Water, the band gets expansive in a way that raises the stakes and drama of their sound even without having to get harsher. Frog may not be the band's most compelling release yet, but its embrace of a slower more spacious brand of shoegaze is nonetheless well done.
Five different songs, a full half of the record's tracklist, were released as singles before it dropped. For the most part, they're a pretty good bunch and they make up most of the first half of the record. The title track Frog In Boiling Water may be my favorite of the bunch serving up a fantastic hook even at the slow pace it opts for. It's also an instrumental highlight serving up classic shoegaze that I absolutely can't resist. The instrumental fadeouts are some of my favorite moments on the entire album.
Raining On Your Pillow was the final single and though it's the moodiest I think the band pulls it off really well. It features absolutely crashing drums that pop up on many of the record's best tracks. It also has this repetition of lyrical refrains that somehow manages to be methodical and emotional in its combination of performance and lyricism. I also liked Everyone Out which is a similarly emotional outing with plucky guitar licks and a dreamy naturalistic feel to its instrumental platte. The album is a much slower pace than DIIV have ever dabbled in before and this is a great example of how they can make strong use of it.
Speaking of pacing some of the deep cuts also manages that line very well. In Amber starts off the record with rattling drums and the kind of thick haze you'd expect from a shoegaze project but with this swagger-soaked soaring lead guitar that feels so alien to the genre. It's a really interesting start. The second half of the record begins with Reflected which is also a big highlight. This is probably the harshest sounding the record ever gets and given how much I liked DIIV's last project it's no surprise the song is a personal favorite. The album is also pretty impressionistic with its lyrical content, but a few of the most compelling lyrics on the entire album pop up on this song too.
The only single to pop up in the second half is Soul-Net which helps guide the album to a strong close. It has an absolutely killer bridge with vocals that shine incredibly bright despite coming from such a soft performance. The emotive power they add to the song is so tangible I can't resist it. That leads into closer Fender On The Freeway which has a dream pop demeanor even though its instrumental passages are occasionally surprisingly clear. It uses the length and space within its composition well to playfully ebb and flow and I like it being the final song here.
Unfortunately, Frog In Boiling Water does have songs I'm a lot less inclined to defend. The poppiest cut of the bunch is lead single Brown Paper Bag which I thought was okay at first but has grown off of me. It does make some of the refrains stickier but it's at the expense of the song itself actually being impactful. Somber The Drums has the opposite issue with vocals so buried that they do almost nothing for the track itself. When the vocals finally do rush in way later in the track its a great moment but its too little too late. That's not even to comment on Little Birds, which may be one of my least favorite DIIV songs ever.
Despite some slip-ups I think this record is still solid and a must-listen for any shoegaze fans. DIIV's 4th album sees them backing down from the aggression and intensity of its predecessor's best moments. But in that hazy expanse, they find an emotional palette that's never been there before and extract some real beauty out of it. The best songs on Frog In Boiling Water live up to the classic shoegaze promise of a painting vivid but imprecise musical palettes for listeners to fall head first into. 7/10
For more noisy guitars check out my review of Glass Beach's Plastic Death
