“Horsehead”
I’ve seen
The middle of five foot
Airtight walls and
I’ve told
The setting sun a joke
He laughed his head right off’
Horsehead
It’s never quite enough
I wanna breathe in
And never breathe back out
Horsehead
I’m never quite enough
I wanna breathe in
And never breathe back out
I sat
In a slump so my shadow
Sat slumped too
Then I laid among the
rocks and stones
Fuck it all
Horsehead
It’s never quite enough
I wanna breathe in
And never breathe back out
Horsehead
I’m never quite enough
I wanna breathe in
And never breathe back out
Wake up, throw it all away,
If nothing’s changed, nothing changes
Wake up, throw it all away,
Everything is nothing anyway
We’re each the rotten squall
At the center of it all
“Like Before you were Born”
the wind fans deadpan,
we plummet through the wake
well, that’s my last mistake
birds land then
stand and fly astray
they’d do that anyway
It’s just
Like before you were born
Through that peaceful moment to
like before you were born
I’m an old man
I tell the same old sun
“I get it, i’ve done it, i’m done.”
Cars breeze past
winding through the calm
I guess their lives go on
It’s just
Like before you were born
Through that peaceful moment to
like before you were born
“Skin Game”
one
afterthought
on a skin game
‘i took it as prescribed’
vow do no harm
buy the cure
but first you buy
the disease
I can see you’ve had some struggles lately
Hey man, i’ve had mine too
fighting to get through the door
But i can’t live like this anymore
they gave us
wings to fly
But then they
Took away the sky
Well, what you want?
‘Serve me’
Sell me to the spoon
I’m cashing in
falling out
tear me down
hang me up
strung out to please the King
in Metropolitan’s Sackler wing
I can
help you
it’s how i
help myself
I know you’ve had some struggles lately
You know i’ve had mine too
fighting to get through the door
But I can’t live like this anymore
They gave us
wings to fly
But then they
Took away the sky
I wanna be your doll
But i won’t be your dog anymore
You gave us
wings to fly
But then you
Took away the sky
sunken ceiling and a sideways grin
we lived to use and and we used to live
crack a
window
get some
life in you
holding in coughs, hiding my head
“everybody respects the dead”
I can
help you
it’s how i
help myself
sunken ceiling and a sideways grin
we lived to use, we used to live
crack a
window
get some
life in me
“Between Tides”
On and on, the clock was wrong
‘You’ve been numb so long’
His words they lapped an endless rote
‘It’s gonna rain, build a boat’
On masterstrokes of ebb and flow
Down the drain the current flows
All along the alpenglow
It seems my pain was self-imposed
I’m just waiting for the storm to die out
I’m just waiting for the storm to die
On and on, in memory
You’ll have my company
Mountainbuilding, anodynes
Both in handfuls at a time
I asked the trees why they grow
they said it’s all we know
I apologize to all i see
For everything i used to be
on and on, the clock was slow
Down the drain, we surely know
How to drink the oceans up?
‘Better start with a cup.’
I’m just waiting for the storm to die out
I’m just waiting for the storm to die
“Taker”
You watched my lips make
the promise i betrayed
the years i lived in vain
chasing the pain with pain
Stand down
There’s oil in my name
my tongue flickers like a wilting flame
Lay it all out
the path of wreckage that i cut
all in want of what?
Who were you to believe?
Your lying eyes or me?
‘I won’t let them tie to you
The shit i put you through’
Stand down
There’s oil in my name
my tongue flickers like a wilting flame
Lay it out
the path of wreckage that i cut
all in want of what?
“For the guilty”
love, revenge,
love, redemption
Rise and fall,
start and stall
cash and prizes
You heard them say
Are for the guilty
And stay that way
But how are you today?
Curtained in with arms outspread
I was a stranger in our bed
Shut away and getting thin
I was a stranger in my skin
Old friends
Consequences
Forgive yourself
Starting now
No matter how
Things may change
Don’t turn away
you’re present now
But the past is in your blood
I’ve been
Curtained in with arms outspread
I was a stranger in our bed
Shut away and getting thin
I was a stranger in my skin
Curtained in with arms outspread
I was a stranger in our bed
Shut away and getting thin
We were both strangers in our skin
“The Spark”
Sit at the foot of my bed
She said like a ghost
Watch a boat
in a cove
Lose hope, who knows?
Here there’s a shadow
A girl in the shade
Wants to find someone
So what, who knows?
In our past
we were such a mess
We did our best only
Time will tell
it’s our past
It’s a wreck
We do our best and
the spark will glow
Sit at the foot of my bed
She said like a ghost
Watch a boat
in a cove
Lose hope, who knows?
As summer fades,
waves carry
your soft knowing gaze
Marigolds in a row
So what, who knows?
In our past
we were such a mess
We did our best only
Time will tell
it’s our past
It’s a wreck
We do our best and
the spark will glow
Letting go, the lines we tow
Surrender what we think we know
Letting go, the lines we tow
tending to the spark up close
Letting go, the lines we tow
Patience pulls the spark up close
‘Lorelei’
dog-star, ram, and pomegranate
fox swam and swans descant
Entranced
In an awful dance
for Lorelei
Pine box or mantle top
circe’s humdrum song
Is pleading for help at my
overcoat of clay
forget my youthful sins,
Lay waste to my transgressions
scream that melody in vain
my lorelei
“Blankenship”
armageddon is a product
And one we choose to buy
Dwell on that for a moment
With Paradise on fire
I guess it’s all the way,
Blankenship
Children lead the cry
You sold them all away,
Blankenship
With thirty years of lies
Who sold us the dominion
over swine that smell their knife
The vicious creature thin and dying
On a scrap of melting ice
The earth is ownerless
Blankenship
Children lead the cry
You sold them all away,
Blankenship
With thirty years of lies
I should have treated you better
Blankenship
the lives you weaponize
You sold them all away
Blankenship
With silver-plated eyes
Think of your sons and daughters
Laid in ashen water
Sirens louder and louder
‘destroy those
who destroy the earth’
“Acheron”
This heart-pounding day has finally arrived
All my living footfalls sigh like the night,
outside the war between illusion and truth
I found wisdom lain among putrid fruit of
Desperation, cold wild gift of youth
Urgent and dead-eyed
Hate the god
i don’t believe in
Heaven’s just a part of hell
Hate the one
Who wouldn’t save us
Shikata ga nai
In the blue mist death has finally closed in
All my gasping words at war with the wind
Worshipping the fear of hell left me lost
i’ve found something for us, souls who have crossed
Charon’s torrent cold spiked black with frost
ashen and dead-eyed
Hate the god
i don’t believe in
Heaven’s just a part of hell
Hate the one
Who wouldn’t save us
Shikata ga nai
Nothing can be done
I’m no one
He’s my blood
Reflected in mud
Leave my body
Among the poppies
I’m nailed to your flaws
You were my god
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Hey. Our new LP "Is The Is Are" is out soon, so around its release we've announced a series of album release shows in NYC, SF, and LA. We are doing short residencies at The Echo and the famed Market Hotel, as well as two Noise Pop shows in SF, with a poster designed by the always great @nickgazin
LOS ANGELES
2/23, 2/24, 2/25 @ The Echo
SAN FRANCISCO
2/27 @ Brick and Mortar for Noise Pop
2/28 @ The Independent for Noise Pop
NEW YORK
3/3, 3/4, 3/5 @ Market Hotel
So, in honor of these shows, we're sharing the title track off our new album, "Is The Is Are", right here:
This song was the last song I wrote for this record. I wrote it even after the rest of the record had already been recorded! I felt like something was missing from the record, that it needed an upbeat, propulsive, and vocal-driven song to kick off the 2nd LP. This is the rare DIIV song that doesn’t rely on a hooky guitar melody, but rather relies on a vocal melody and a propulsive bassline. This song was inspired by my experience recreating Neu!’s “Hallogallo” for a Noisey documentary on Krautrock. I was heavily inspired by the process behind the song. All the lead guitars on the track came from just me playing melodies over the song, as I would with any other song, but then we took the whole guitar track and flipped it backwards. Then, we did the same thing again! I recently read an interview with Michael Rother of Neu! in Tape Op magazine while waiting in line at a customs check in Berlin, months and months after the album was already submitted, and he talked about the recording process of “Hallogallo” and he said they basically did the same thing, playing melodies over the track and then flipping them backwards, but he said that they played their parts over an extended 30-minute version of the song and that their producer Connie Plank took their guitar parts and chopped them up to include his favorite bits, and I remember thinking, “aw man, I wish I had thought of doing that.” Anyway, I like the song the way it is.
The lyrics on this track are pretty intense, they’re included above. Kind of about finding yourself in vastly different, often paradoxical headspaces at various stages throughout addiction and recovery. One paradox is that while you're out on the street killing yourself, you can be feeling real good; while the process of ‘getting better’ is an extremely long and painful experience, though one that can also be extremely life-affirming.
This is the title track for our record “Is The Is Are” -- the song title came from the album title. A lot of people have asked about the reasoning behind having such a nonsensical title. So I guess I should try and explain it. Basically, I wanted something slightly disorienting, that felt homemade and imperfect, easy to criticize, something that made the reader feel like they weren’t grasping my intent, like I was being misunderstood, because I’ve felt so misunderstood throughout the entirety of DIIV’s existence. I wanted a title that wasn’t taken from a lyric on the album, or from the title of the album’s lead single, like they usually are. I didn’t want to name our second album “2″. I always feel like, if there’s an opportunity to be creative, there’s no reason not to use it. I wanted the title to come straight from the album art. I was really inspired by Concrete Poetry from the 60′s, poetry that took a visual form and was as much visual art as it was poetry. I loved Tom Philips “A Humument”. I wanted the title to come from a poem. Another random inspiration was from the internet -- I got a lot of laughs from these two specific internet memes. One was “Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?”, and another was “I accidentally 93MB of rar files”. I felt like language had a specific type of power when it was misused. I wanted something that felt profound, but upon closer inspection was meaningless. I reached out to a poet/artist I found in Paris named Frederick Deming who I thought would totally understand where I was coming from. His comics, called Bizaroids, seemed to totally fit with the direction I wanted to go with this album art and title. I told him about “A Humement” and about “Has anyone really...” and wrote a few sample poems, and told him to go crazy. I felt like English being his second language would add another dimension to the poetry. Within a week, he sent me over 30 poems, and what he came up with couldn’t have been more perfect. Here are some poems he sent:
Together is am above.
We is the us.
Where am to be we.
-----
Black is practic
Licking my thigh
For go there for 44
------
Star route buss trout
Piolet no use, camping ha ha ?
Lights crew 321 ?
-----
So with so you you see?
Bring we bring us with we.
Am are you be.
A bunch of these are included in the album art, on the printed eurosleeves, hand-lettered by Frederick and superimposed on top of paintings by Joji Nakamura, while even more are included in the special edition art, which includes a 32-page chapbook of Frederick’s drawings and more of his poems. The poem that I chose to take the album title from was the one I felt like fit the project the best:
Hear is their.
Story, we is you .
Is the is are.
I got this poem in an email from Frederick, and probably less than an hour after I got that email, I had already announced the album title. For me, this line just jumped off the page. I didn’t really have to think about it. I knew what I wanted, and this was it. Hopefully this whole thing will help explain where the title and the poem and the concept and everything all came from... Thanks to Frederick and also to Joji and Hyto who worked really hard on making all the art that makes up the package of “Is The Is Are”. If you can, please try to order the vinyl here: http://www.omnianmusicgroup.com/products/is-the-is-are
Thanks.
-Cole
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I feel like when discussing this album, a lot has been made of its relationship to drugs, and my own personal relationship with drugs. I've talked about it in the press as openly as I can because it is so important for me that this album register to people as being as true and as honest and as rooted in reality as possible.
approaching the subject of drugs in art, on a rock and roll album especially, is a special kind of complicated. the drug issues of so many archetypal rock stars have been so glamorized for so many decades, while also throughout history variously registering as being one of rock and roll's most thoroughly exhausted clichés.
in discussing my own history openly and completely, I hoped to remove any attempt at seeming "cool" or "glamorous" and tried instead to totally humanize it. If you've watched the end of "Montage of Heck" or listened to Elliott Smith playing live at the Riviera theatre in Chicago (or lots of other late-era live Elliott), you probably don't see Kurt or Elliott's drug issues as being anything other than what they were: just plain sad. Addicts are sick people.
But I never wanted this record to be mired too deep in darkness either. My life wasn't all drugs and addiction, rehab/relapse, and sickness. I also met and fell in love with someone.
On "Dopamine", i say about Sky "you're the sun and I was your cloud", which is literally how I felt so many times we were together, and her name kinda made the metaphor feel doubly appropriate. I guess I also kinda carried it over to "Under the Sun" which deep down is just a love song, meant to be moment of levity amongst the heaviness of a lot of the rest of the record. No matter where you are, no matter what happens, I’m here. I don't think I would have made it out if it weren't for love. Not really sure what else to say.
here are the lyrics:
yes i’ll come back to you
no i wont ask where you run
under the sun
Yes I’ll catch up to you
Then I’ll ask what have we done
Under the sun
To be free, be awake
big breath you can’t fake
once you’ve begun
press my face to the back
all the pillars that stack
and hold up the sun
listen here:
https://soundcloud.com/capturedtracks/diiv-under-the-sun-official-single
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