Welcome back to Crate Digging, our recurring feature that dives into music history and turns up several albums that all music fans should know. In this edition, DIIV test each other with a list of 13 albums they think their fellow band members would probably hate.
DIIV are well-versed in playful tension. It’s a major feature of Frog in Boiling Water, their terrific new album that teeters between fuzzed-out, anti-capitalist rage and harrowing apathy.
As a group, however, DIIV are unsurprisingly chill. Zooming in from four different accounts, the band — comprised of vocalist and guitarist Cole Smith, guitarist Andrew Bailey, bassist Colin Caulfield, and drummer Ben Newman — are gearing up for a major tour in support of Frog In Boiling Water (get tickets here), and are appropriately trying to savor their last few weeks of peace before cramming back into the tour van for another go around.
“We worked on this album for a really long time, so it’s a huge relief to have it coming out — but it also means we have to transition into a period of a very, very different kind of work,” Newman tells Consequence. “So, it’s scary and exciting.”
For this Crate Digging, DIIV decided to test each other with albums they think the rest of their fellows would probably hate. Of course, not all band members hate all the albums — Newman seemed to enjoy the majority of them. But it’s fascinating to see what each member deemed as both a beloved album and one that’s hard to love. Some of these albums are annoying, abrasive, inaccessible, or downright earnest — but no matter how they sound, the members of DIIV love them through and through.
See below for each DIIV member’s list of albums they love that they think their other band members would probably hate, including Royal Trux’s Accelerator, Sublime’s 40 Oz. to Freedom, and Opeth’s Blackwater Park.