When "Dopamine" dropped last year, it spent four minutes breaking nearly four years' worth of promises Zachary Cole Smith had made about DIIV’s sophomore album. There was no remnant of the San Francisco magic Smith hoped to conjure by working with Chet "J.R" White. It did not sound like Royal Trux and it definitely did not sound like Elliott Smith. It didn't signal that Smith would follow through on his proposed indictment of guitar-based music’s lack of originality and relevance. It was, however, the most sharply written DIIV song to date, making a promise Is the Is Are actually keeps: While it’s mostly about getting high and it sounds exactly like DIIV, it finds more interesting ways to do both of those things.
Though not the Tago Mago or Tusk-style double album Smith originally planned, Is the Is Are makes unusual demands for an indie rock record. With each of the five singles in its protracted rollout, DIIV confirmed they were making their proprietary sound deeper and more immersive. The revelation of a 17-song tracklist promised scatter and sprawl, like a hybrid of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Disintegration. However, this is more in the spirit of Seventeen Seconds to Pornography: gray, gloomy textures, depressive fatalism. And like those records, Is the Is Are doesn’t engage in fantasy or open up new worlds—it builds a nearly impenetrable wall around the self. Call it Requiem for a Dream-pop, dedicated to a gorgeous yet unglamorous portrayal of addiction.
DIIV's signature trick is conflating the treadmill momentum of habit with the false hope for escape, and this was about the only trick they had going on Oshin. Written and performed entirely by Smith with every instrument mixed evenly, Oshin relied on its cumulative effect, soft-selling its hooks. Whereas Oshin was meditative and static, "Dopamine" and "Under the Sun" are transportive and intricate, taking mid-song off-ramps to more interesting vistas. Even "(Fuck)" serves its purpose as an 17-second cleanse between the record’s murky midsection and its luminous final stretch. Now functioning as a road-tested, democratic band in the studio, every member of DIIV has to assert himself, and the slightest alteration to their usual sound brings out new features—a brief glimmer of piano cuts through an enveloping humidity on "Healthy Moon" similar to early R.E.M.; the jumped-up rhythm of "Valentine" is sourced from the Smiths while retaining DIIV’s clenched-teeth tension; Devin Perez’s melodic basslines function as a lead instrument and allows Smith and Andrew Bailey’s guitars to search out more interesting textures and harmonies.
An hour of this ensures there are times where DIIV threaten to become too in love with their own sound, particularly toward the middle. But beyond lending Is the Is Are a necessary heft to back Smith’s claims, these songs are convincing portrayals of checked-out living. We don’t get to find out much about the Roi and Grant to whom "Bent" and "Mire" are dedicated; DIIV’s obsessive tinkering turns everything outside of Smith into a hall of mirrors, false friends and true loves reflecting back on his own struggles. On "Bent (Roi's Song)," Smith sighs, "When it feels right, you just lost the fight," a deflated admission of defeat before "Dopamine" echoes the same sentiment with a false sense defiance. "Mire" repeats "I was blind but now I see" as an epiphany, and Smith immediately regrets awareness thereafter by meeting the "Incarnate Devil."
You can make legitimate guesses as to whom that song might be dedicated—scene guys in Brooklyn, drugs themselves, people once in his inner circle? Smith’s measure of quasi-celebrity might give him unfair advantage over his stylistic peers, but it’s an advantage all the same, so when his conversational lyrics feel insular, we at least know who’s having the conversation. Sky Ferreira contributes lead vocal on the exhaust-huffing "Blue Boredom," deadpanning sing-talk beat poetry that imagines the two as Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore rather than Kurt and Courtney. She’s just as present when DIIV allow themselves fleeting hope on the awestruck "Under the Sun" and resignation on the heartbreaking "Loose Ends"—"Does it feel watered down/ Do you feel older now?" appears in quotes on the lyrics sheet, implying it’s a talk between people stuck having the same conversation over and over again.
Immediately after "Loose Ends," Is the Is Are goes on the opposite of a victory lap, trudging toward its finish with no hint of optimism. Penultimate track "Dust" has been kicking around since 2013, and the lyric "I’m fucked to die in a world of shit" immediately jumped out of their practice space. I expected it to be a placeholder, a sentiment to be expressed more artfully at a later date—unlike his heroes, Smith doesn't allow for humor or irony. But the line remains on "Dust" and introduces a hint of nihilistic sarcasm that, along with its title, evokes an unintentional grunge-era classic: Alice in Chains’ Dirt, the most harrowing document of smack-addled myopia to ever sell five million copies, the scariest aspect of which was its narrator’s utter refusal to acknowledge outside help, let alone seek it. And immediately after "Dust," Smith spends Is the Is Are’s eerie closer warding off interventions with a hopeless mantra: "It’s no good, it’d be a waste of breath."
Even if DIIV turns its morose self-indulgence into a virtue, it’s unlikely to change the conversation amongst their detractors: those who see DIIV as an embodiment of everything insular and insufferable about Brooklyn indie rock will probably find that Smith is no more capable of filling his ambitions to be a true generational artist as he is one of his oversized T-shirts. But Smith’s willingness to open himself up to criticism by making statements—fashion, musical, or self-promoting—make discussions of DIIV more divisive and passionate than those surrounding similarly positioned bands like Wild Nothing, the War on Drugs, or Real Estate.
This aspect of DIIV aligns with songs like "Dopamine," "Dust," and "Waste of Breath," ensuring that Is the Is Are hits on a visceral, teenage level similar to that of the Cure or Smashing Pumpkins, bands who were also mercilessly mocked in their day by gatekeepers of cool as both social climbing posers and "stuck in the terminal malaise of adolescent existentialism." It’s the same immediacy that inspires thousands of high schoolers to rock Unknown Pleasures and Nirvana T-shirts as well, even if they might not understand their cultural impact. But they relate to the disillusion, doubt, and confusion of a compelling, controversial frontperson because those things never go out of style.
