Is The Is Are

10th Anniversary of Is the Is Are – an album years and many personal struggles in the making for its architect, Zachary Cole Smith. Recorded and mixed in various locations in Brooklyn, the album showcases everything you know and love about DIIV and many things you did not, all with an added nuance and depth. It’s a 17-song album statement intended to resonate with its audience in much the same way that ‘Bad Moon Rising’ or ‘Tago Mago’ has for Smith himself. An extension and deepening of the musical ideas first expressed on 2012’s critically-lauded ‘Oshin’, ‘Is The Is Are’ yields a multiplicity of textures, lyrical themes and moods. It is a more diverse world than ‘Oshin’, with different parameters and ideals. Dark and honest to a fault, the new songs are dynamic, loud, quiet, sad; they are songs that hiss and snarl; songs that, as Smith wrote recently, represent “the real me.” Smith’s vocals, too, are much closer to the foreground, layered legibly on top of tidal waves of shimmering guitar and melodic bass weaving in and out, leaving a distinct and indelible imprint.