Sandy Kim
DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith.
Zachary Cole Smith, frontman for the Brooklyn-based shoegaze band DIIV, has accomplished a lot during his 30 years. An East Coast lifer, he spent portions of the last decade in several acclaimed rock acts, including Beach Fossils and Small Black. DIIV (pronounced dive) began as Smith’s solo project and later evolved into a full band, which in 2012 released a terrific debut album, Oshin. DIIV’s perplexingly titled follow-up, Is the Is Are, is expected to be released this fall. Isthmus spoke with Cole after a full day of band practice for DIIV’s month-long tour, which started Oct. 10 and comes to the Majestic Theatre on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
How did you get ready for the tour?
We had rehearsals all day with our engineer, so it’s going to sound super-good. And little things like I ordered 50 guitar picks off Amazon. The sound and music are the most important part, but I’m [also] going to do all the visual stuff. We have a screen behind us while we’re up there rockin’ — I shot a bunch of footage and edited it together for [90 minutes] of video. It starts before our set and goes until we’re done.
Given that you’re out on tour before your album is released this fall, are you excited for fans to have the opportunity to hear the songs for the first time straight from your band?
Sometimes it’s nice when people know the songs, but other times it’s nice to just gauge a reaction to hearing a song for the first time. I think people who are coming to see us on this tour are coming to get a preview of what’s next. At least I hope so, because we’re playing a lot of it.
Do you have a solid plan for the album’s release?
That’s all getting announced soon. Unfortunately, I can’t say that much about it, but in the next week or two we’re going to drop a new track and announce the record — the date and everything like that.
A few of the songs have made their way onto YouTube as fan-shot live videos. How do you feel about that?
If people are going there to check stuff out and just see what it’s like, that’s cool, but if people are on there talking like “Oh they sound bad,” obviously you can’t judge sound off of that. In general, I think people have been psyched about the new stuff. Watching the YouTube stuff shows that they want to hear it and know what’s up, so that’s a great thing.