DIIV – Is the Is Are

Vinyl LP pressing. Is the Is Are, the highly-anticipated sophomore release from Brooklyn-based DIIV, is an album years and many personal struggles in the making for it’s architect, Zachary Cole Smith. Recorded and mixed in various locations in Brooklyn, it showcases everything you know and love about DIIV, and many things you did not, all with an added nuance and depth. It is a 17-song, double-album statement intended to resonate with it’s audience in much the same way that Bad Moon Rising or Tago Mago has for Smith himself. An extension and deepening of the musical ideas first expressed on 2012’s critically-lauded Oshin, Is the Is Are yields a multiplicity of textures, lyrical themes, and moods. It is a more diverse world than Oshin, with different parameters and ideals. Dark and honest to a fault, the new songs are dynamic, loud, quiet, sad; they are songs that hiss and snarl; songs that, as Smith wrote recently, represent “the real me.” Smith’s vocals, too, are much closer to the foreground, layered legibly on top of tidal waves of shimmering guitar and melodic bass weaving in and out, leaving a distinct and indelible imprint.

• 1Out of Mind 3:08
• 2Under the Sun 3:47
• 3Bent (Roi’s Song) 5:40
• 4Dopamine 3:56
• 5Blue Boredom (Sky’s Song) 2:33
• 6Valentine 3:18
• 7Yr Not Far 3:19
• 8Take Your Time 4:58
• 9Is the Is Are 3:09
• 10Mire (Grant’s Song) 5:35
• 11Incarnate Devil 4:43
• 12(F***) 0:17
• 13Healthy Moon 4:12
• 14Loose Ends 3:13
• 15(Napa) 1:44
• 16Dust 4:34
• 17Waste of Breath 5:23

CTRC901169.1