DIIV in The Garage

Zachary Cole Smith is the guitarist for lo-fi surf rock outfit Beach Fossils, whose band-members are currently off pursuing their own side-projects. For Smith, his efforts have coalesced into DIIV (said ‘Dive’), with the debut album Oshin coming out earlier this year.

From these names, you get no points for guessing that DIIV’s music is still very much awash with that seaside sound, but the album also includes some more sophisticated guitar playing and elements of shoegaze and psychedelia. Described as “one part THC, two parts MDMA”, Oshin was a gorgeous, dreamy debut record, a definite soundtrack to my summer.

Conversely, they decided tobring the tour to the UK as winter began to sink in around us, playing a smattering of headline dates and providing support to the (vastly inferior) Vaccines. This quick dash around the country included one brief stop in London, a sell-out headline date at the Relentless Garage in Islington.

Support came in the form of Aldous R.H, in fact another side-project fronted by Manchester native Alex Hewitt of Egyptian Hip Hop fame. A heady mix of psychedelic guitars and delay-soaked vocals, their sound swung from sounding like Tame Impala slowed down to getting lost in a droney cover of an Arthur Russell song that left the crowd somewhat disorientated. Though I’d been tipped about them before, their set was pleasantly surprising; it says a lot that they managed to pull quite a crowd away from the bars. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said about the other support band Parakeet, who fit with the slow-burning grunge/garage-rock revival that I can’t really get into.

But if Aldous seemed to have drawn a good crowd, it was nothing compared to the turn-out for DIIV themselves; the venue was packed almost wall to wall and quickly became uncomfortably hot, and this wasn’t helped by what happened once the band got on stage. After beginning with the soothing melodies of album opener ‘Druun’, Smith and his bandmates suddenly launched into the next track ‘Past Lives’ in double time, thrashing out the riffs in a way that was impressive but utterly unexpected. The front of the crowd went mad, but I was left bemused.

And they continued in this way for the rest of the show, playing every song at twice the tempo and throwing in solos and jams that warped thaesthetic completely. The tracks were familiar, and every now and then an oasis of calm seemed to form as a familiar melody took hold, only to be interrupted but an inexplicable flurry of notes. It was all frantic, more dude rock than shoegaze. Escaping to the back of the room for fear of melting and looking around at the crowd, it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d be caught off-guard; DIIV were technically brilliant, no doubt, but this wasn’t what I’d expected to see.