DIIV on Bandcamp.
The joke about ChatGPT writing a shoegaze song is overused but in the case of DIIV, at least ChatGPT would use a more interesting singer. I regret first listening to “Brown Paper Bag” (bland) through its horrendous music video. Shoegaze musicians, god bless them, are not funny. This is ultra-serious music for preteens who take themselves too seriously and music journalists who wish they were preteens again back when the world promised them a career hanging out with other preteens and blurbing about B-tier Slowdive ripoffs. And I say this as someone who still believes Loveless is the rare good shoegaze album because yada yada yada. Radiohead did the last clever thing in rock music with “Fitter Happier” and every mediocre band since (including my beloved The 1975) thought they could one-up irony. What a pitiful sentence to write. The other irony is that DIIV is now music-industry-famous enough to maybe get a polite pass from SNL’s music booker. I would add a half-star if they picked a more interesting song title and wrote a more interesting song. If you see a band in which the bass player is wearing a tank top, run.
-Brady Gerber
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