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The sonic parameters of shoegaze appear to have slowed their once intriguing diversification. Post-millenium infusions with metal (Deftones, Alcest) and hip-hop (Dälek, Clouddead) promised a bold future, however, today’s shoegazers frequently appear more interested in remaining within the familiar aesthetic boundaries of the genre’s nineties heyday.
DIIV’s ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ captures the genre’s current mode of revivalist preservation. The latest from the Brooklyn four-piece is a sedate, melancholic collection, rife with fuzzed-out guitars, leisurely tempos and hushed vocals. In short; everything you expect from a genre that seems to have frozen in cultural time.
DIIV’s musical trajectory has been one of similarly increased refrigeration. Their first two records (2012’s ‘Oshin’ and 2016’s ‘Is the Is Are’) were light-on-their-feet indie pop runouts, before 2019’s ‘Deceiver’ saw the band freeze-dry their tempos and drizzle layers of Kevin Shields-worshipping guitars atop its moody murmurings.
By doubling further down on these familiar textures, ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ serves as a potent example of shoegaze undergoing the ‘foreverisation’ process, to borrow writer Grafton Tanner’s term. Rather than taking influence from the genre’s canon to build something new, DIIV’s fourth full-length reanimates the genre, squeezing further life out of its weathered components.
And for some fans, this will be more than enough. These ten songs move with a familiarly dazed, head-foggy stumble; a stupor that feels as though it’s half aware of its own resurrected status. ‘Brown Paper Bag’’s climactic vibrato leads reverberate like half-remembered dreams, while the crystalline chimes of the title track repeat like a simple mantra, transporting the listener through the annals of shoegaze’s storied history.
Several lyrics bolster this self-aware, incantatory quality. On the title track, vocalist Zachary Cole Smith sings “the future came/and everything’s known/there’s nothing left to say”. It’s a moment of potential sadness, however the song’s breezy tone eschews any emotional blows.
When it arouses itself from its fugue state, ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ touches on moments of lucid, energetic individuality. ‘Somber the Drums’ is a highlight; a dense, lively cut that draws the best out of DIIV with swirling snatches of vocals and heartrending melodies. Closer ‘Fender on the Freeway’ picks up the pace, gradually opening its eyes as it builds to a pretty and loud (by the album’s standards) crescendo.
When it reverts back to its somnambulist calm, a gentle, numbing quality befalls these simple songs. The likes of ‘Little Birds’ and ‘Raining On Your Pillow’ are lullingly linear, driven by routine drum patterns and interchangeable vocal melodies. Depending on your perspective, the sparse instrumentation is either ‘minimalist’ or ‘undercooked’, oscillating between the polarities across the course of this languid collection.
A quiet, undemanding and opaque album, ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ will appeal to a section of shoegaze fans that are keen to surrender to its impressionistic, seemingly-timeless charms. Others may ask themselves: why does it feel a bit like we’re living the same day over and over again?
ALBUM REVIEWS
The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
