Photo by John Kelly
DIIV frontman Zachary Cole Smith was supposed to be on the phone over an hour ago. By my count, he's blowing me off in four separate ways: Text messages and voicemails have not been returned and there's radio silence from his PR and management. This isn't entirely unexpected. In the past year, Smith has lambasted SXSW's corporate overlords, made a grainy, NSFW music video on the heels of a Terry Richardson photoshoot, modeled for Saint Laurent Paris, hastily canceled a string of European tour dates, and has seemingly been seen around every single indie rock club in New York with a very visible companion in pop starlet Sky Ferreira. So if I was looking to support the emerging portrayal of him as a possibly-entitled Kurt Cobain wannabe going through his "corporate magazines still suck" phase while living inside NYC's indie rock bubble, he's done me a huge favor.
Alas, it's not quite so simple. I wake up the next morning with an apologetic text from Smith and a request asking if we could set this interview up directly. He's recently been having trouble communicating with some people in his inner circle, mostly because he's planning on firing them. When we finally connect, the self-described "control freak" explains, "When you're an artist-- especially a successful or moderately-successful artist-- there's just a lot of people in the music industry who want a piece of that, and I've become a little bit wise to the kind of stuff to be careful of." Apparently, his rocky experiences following the release of last year's debut album Oshin have taught him a huge lesson: Treat the music industry like a game and you're going to get played.
Whenever an indie rock artist speaks candidly about their financial realities, there's a tendency to blame the victim: "They knew what they were getting into, and seriously, how much money is there to be squeezed out of a band at DIIV's level anyway?" But what emerges from speaking with Smith is that his words and actions aren't out of greed, nor are they an extension of outmoded punk principles about the commodification of art. It's about fairness and making sure some of the money changing hands thanks to his music actually ends up in his own. "Between booking agents, management, and lawyers, I pay-out about 40% of all the money before I even see it," he says. "All these people work on commissions, and they're not in it for the art because they're not artists." And when you consider how thin the profit margins are for a band like DIIV as opposed to an act that might get their own "Behind The Music", you start to realize what's at stake when shaky accounting or a haphazardly-booked tour causes a few thousand dollars to go missing.
So what does this have to do with DIIV's second album? Pretty much everything. Smith repeatedly describes the music on Oshin as"deliberate," and the lyrics as "impersonal." He's written 40-50 new songs this time around, and he claims, "I really want to make a record about the current state of guitar bands. I feel like there really aren't people in indie rock right now, there's just all these faceless bands that live in clichés. They're going through the motions." He promises that the turmoil he's experienced as of late has inspired him to recognize his own part in the problem, too. "In the past, I've been guilty of not really taking my task seriously, too."
When we spoke earlier this month, Smith was back in his "no-frills" apartment after finishing another exhausting run of shows. "It's just a room with a bed in it. There's no kitchen or bathroom. There's a shared bathroom in the hall," he says without any real sense of resignation. Smith doesn't consider himself to be a social person ("I don't really 'hang out' with anybody") and admits to being a "person of routine" who disdains touring on account of it fucking up breakfast ("I have my things I like to eat and my little walk that I like to do in the morning"). His troubles with depression and repression immediately come to the fore; the moment we get started, he speaks for about six consecutive minutes, and this repeats over the next hour. He airs out a year's worth of thoughts about how he's been affected by success, expectations, failed recording sessions with former Girls member Chet "JR" White, shady industry types, and drugs. "The band's given me a lot of cool opportunities, but it's also put me in a lot of situations that I never would've been exposed to before, and put me through a lot of stress and crazy stuff. But I can now put those sentiments into the songs, which I like."
"Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to
being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up."
Pitchfork: Are you planning on getting out on the road again any time soon?
Zachary Cole Smith: No, fucking thank god. We've been on tour since the band started. I stole some time to work on this record, because it's kind of the only thing I care about. It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made. There's all these people involved, and it becomes this huge machine-- it stops being just me making my own little songs for myself, or for the world. And it's hard to stop the machine. If you want to take time to write a record, they're like, "OK, tour through March, April, and June, then you can take a few weeks off to record in July before getting back on the road for the European festival circuit." After a while, I had to put my foot down.
Pitchfork: Was there any specific situation that made you put your foot down?
ZCS: No. It's not like I had a breakdown, though it kind of felt like it at the time. I agreed to everything that happened. You can't really be at work and be like, "That's it. I've had too much. I'm going home." I spent my life working before I started this band. I worked construction, landscaping. I worked in kitchens, cleaned dishes. I worked demolition.
Canceling the European tour was more about balance. A record is worth 10,000 live shows. Some kid can say, "Hey, I really want you to play my town in Switzerland, or Sweden, or Latvia," and they could have a fun night at the show. On the other hand, all those kids could have a record that means something to them in a more personal way a couple months down the road. The live band is a really important thing for us, but my focus is on the album now.
Pitchfork: Does your touring band have any input in the songwriting?
ZCS: The touring band is DIIV, and the songs are always written with them in mind. But the new record is going to be more "me." Even if you take "Oshin (Subsume)", from the first record, though I play every instrument on that song, I wouldn't say that you can see my DNA all over it. It's meant to be democratic. All the different parts in that song are equally weighted: the bass, drums, vocals, and guitars are all the same exact volume. I've checked if the band wants to be a part of the songwriting, and it seems like they're not really interested. None of them are songwriters. They just prefer to live in New York City, live their regular lives, and maybe work a side job or just live off the band, and then go on tour. I don't think they're really into the creative side of things.
Pitchfork: If they're living off DIIV, were they mad when you canceled the tour?
ZCS: No. Nobody really wanted to do that one European tour. For one, it was budgeted to lose money. They would've made something, but I would've lost a lot of money.
Pitchfork: Why does a tour that's going to lose money get booked to begin with?
ZCS: The idea is: You played to 100 people this week in Europe, and then next week you can play to 200. It's an investment in that territory. But it can lose money because it's very expensive to go to Europe. You can't really just say, like, "Oh, we're gonna take our van and drive to California tomorrow." It's more like, "Oh, we have to fly to London and rent three guitar amps, a bass amp, drums; buy all these flights for four people; hire a driver." It's pretty easy to lose money on tour-- most bands do on their first couple of tours. We're more established, but I think it was just poorly booked. It was a mess from the get-go.
Watch DIIV play a new song called "Dust" in their practice space:
Pitchfork: Can you talk about your experience at SXSW this year? The general backlash to your statements seemed to find hypocrisy in criticizing something you willfully participated in.
ZCS: People were like, "This artist is anti-corporate, he looks like Kurt Cobain, he has long hair. OK, I get it: This is the zeitgeist anti-corporate punk rock." Fucking whatever. That wasn't my intention at all. Our fucking government is owned by corporations, and other companies get money from the government. If you live in Germany, you get money from the government if you're an artist. So since our government is corporations, it makes sense that we should be taking money from corporations to pay for our art.
If I play Coachella, it's sponsored by a company-- that's corporate, too. But we're playing it because we're getting paid and we want to be a part of the festival. At SXSW, there's all this corporate money changing hands, but none of it goes to the artists. It's fucking bullshit. But I didn't want it to be like, "DIIV-- the band that hates SXSW," because that's not my main tenet as an artist. Some people were like, "DIIV is not having fun at SXSW." I was having a blast. All my friends were there. But I lost $8,000. We were participants in it, but kind of blindly. Our booking agent was just like, "These are the shows you're playing in Austin. Here. You're going." So then we bought the flights and went.
At the time, I thought of it as part of a game. I'd been twice before, and it was never that bad. I've always been going as a band that was trying to break; I went with Beach Fossils and we played 40 shows because we wanted people to see us. And then it got to this year, and, in some ways, we were one of the larger bands playing. We weren't desperate for attention. We were a commodity used by corporations to make their brand look fashionable, but then they used us to keep kids out of venues. We'd play in a 150 capacity room for 20 minutes with no sound check, and all the kids are outside, because they're like, "Sorry, you're not cool enough to go in the fucking Red Bull Vans Fort over here." I participated in it partially because I didn't really think it through before I went, and also because, you know, everybody goes. But when we got there, I realized what a fucked up thing it is. It seems to get worse every year.
Pitchfork: What's your advice for a band who's just getting started and wants to use SXSW as a way of getting their name out there?
ZCS: If I had my way, SXSW wouldn't happen in 2014. I don't think it deserves to exist.
"At SXSW, there's all this corporate money changing hands,
but none of it goes to the artists. It's fucking bullshit. I lost $8,000."
Pitchfork: How did the opportunity arise to model for Saint Laurent Paris?
ZCS: [YSL creative director] Hedi [Slimane] is a music-obsessed guy. I might've originally met him through Sky. If you look at his work, he has this prototypical look that he wants. I was at Ariel Pink's show the other day at Webster Hall and [Ariel] commented on my Saint Laurent haircut. It's totally true: Ariel, Christopher Owens, me, and Courtney Love, all in Saint Laurent ads, all with the same haircut.
Pitchfork: How is the fashion world different than the music world?
ZCS: I grew up around fashion-- my mom was an editor for Vogue. Compared to the music industry, though, I'd say [fashion] is a little bit more disorganized. But it's exciting for me because, when you're a performer, there is a fashion element. Music is much more of a multimedia sort of thing than I expected. It's about your music, but it's also about the cover art, or what you're wearing on stage, or a video that you make.
Pitchfork: Do you sometimes think, "This modeling life would be way easier than being on tour 10 months a year"?
ZCS: I wouldn't say music is my passion, or my calling, or anything like that. I mean, I don't really believe in that kind of stuff. Life is a series of chance happenings, so I just fell into it. But music is an opportunity to say every single thing that you want to say. People will pore over whatever you say and however you say it and, for me, it represents complete freedom of speech. You can't show somebody what it's like to experience loss, but you can soundtrack it and help them experience their own loss. I am so lucky to have this venue to be able to say and talk about all the stuff I've been through.
Pitchfork: DIIV was originally named after a Nirvana song, and there's always been a visual similarity between yourself and Kurt Cobain. How has your relationship with his music changed since DIIV started taking off?
ZCS: He was a spirit guide in the beginning. I knew what all the fame would feel like already because I read about it in his journals. And I saw the angry letters that he would write to Lynn [Hirschberg], who wrote a shitty article [in Vanity Fair] about Courtney Love-- there's a copy of the fax he hand-wrote to her saying that he's going to kill her. So I had a sense of what it was like to be a couple who has exposure. But again: Kurt is completely different.
To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that his fame has reached. But I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes-- ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.
Pitchfork: Are drugs a problem?
ZCS: Yeah, they're a huge problem. [laughs] Definitely on tour, at least. We had one tour particularly where it was really bad, and a bunch of us-- not everybody-- were all just lying to each other. There's a lot of deception and bad blood. Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.
Photos by Pooneh Ghana
Pitchfork: After the reviews for Oshin came out last year, you posted the lyrics and claimed not enough critics paid attention to them. Do you feel like you weren't being taken seriously?
ZCS: The lyrics from the first record are kind of secondary; it wasn't a record where I wanted to draw much attention to the lyrics. On this new record, though, the lyrics are the centerpiece. If you're a brand new band making your first record, it's just easier to get people to listen if you have simple pop songs. It's way less controversial. We paid our dues on that first record, and people are going to be way more patient listening to what I have to say now. I don't have five seconds to get their attention, I have five minutes. That's a huge window.
"There's so much nostalgia in rock music. The Rolling Stones
are on the cover of Rolling Stone. How fucking cheesy is that?"
Pitchfork: You recently did a recording session with former Girls member JR White in San Francisco. How'd that come about?
ZCS: He's a friend. But in some ways, I was totally misguided. I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture-- I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all. We sat down in a studio and, instead of picking up a guitar and having some beautiful thing come out, I just had no idea what the fuck I was doing there and gave up before I even started. Anything that we recorded was a great learning experience, and it was really cool to work with JR. I consider him to be a musical big brother. But that particular session was completely misguided. I was desperate and I went out there for the wrong reasons.
Pitchfork: So JR won't be involved with the second record?
ZCS: I want to produce the record myself. We've had every modern-day producer flying at me like, "Oh, this guy produced this band," and it's some fucking band that I read about on Pitchfork two years ago. It's cool to get attention but, in the end, I'm a control freak and I have a very clear vision. I'm the only person who I can trust to produce this record.
Watch DIIV play an untitled new song at a recent show:
Pitchfork: Who are you looking towards for songwriting inspiration?
ZCS: There's a huge influence that I really wanna establish on the record: Elliott Smith. On the first record, we kind of eschewed pop structure-- it was much more influenced by German psychedelic bands like Kluster, La Düsseldorf, Neu!, or Can. But listening to Elliott has brought me into pop structure-- verses and choruses and pre-choruses-- stuff that I never really found interesting before. Also, I'm inspired by Royal Trux's Accelerator and their self-titled record-- there's something so chaotic about it.
But generally, I think people are just going through the motions now. There's so much stuff that people are doing today that has already been done. I kind of like that new Savages record, but I don't know why they take themselves so seriously. There's this manifesto, it's pure throwback. I'm not interested in that. There's so much nostalgia in rock music. The Rolling Stones are on the cover of Rolling Stone. How fucking cheesy is that?
Pitchfork: Now that you're trying to put more of your personality into your songwriting, are you worried about people getting to know the "real" you?
ZCS: I don't know if there's anything that would surprise people, because I don't think that anybody knows anything about me at all. There's not much out there. I think I'm going to come out with a pretty dark and troubled record, and it might upset some people. There's a lot of stuff that I've been through in my life in the past couple of months that I don't really want to share with people who are close to me, but I have no option if it's my art.
Pitchfork: Has your relationship with Sky helped you sort through these things?
ZCS: She's definitely been there for me through a lot of fucked up personal shit. But also in terms of being a kind of popular artist figure and knowing how isolating that is, and knowing what it feels like to be skeptical of people, and to be taken advantage of, especially by your friends. That's a hard to pill to swallow, and we've been through that together, or watched each other go through it. It helps to have somebody that close to you who can relate. I can say with some confidence that I feel like Sky saved my life.