DIIV ended up playing almost an hour longer than scheduled for.
If you weren’t there, you missed a lot.
The night started with Karen Meat, local darlings from Des Moines. The plucky ensemble, bathed in blood-red stage light, took to the stage with messy hair and all-black ensembles. Their driven sound was both pleasant and aggressive, synthesizing magical trills as the trio bobbed about and giggled. Singing about the world ending, Arby’s, and pissing people off; Karen Meat was comfortable, conversational, but not sloppy whatsoever. I think my favorite part of the performance was when, at the end, the omnichord was being strummed by a drink.
When DIIV appeared, the stage transformed into a oceanic blue – rather fitting for the headliner
An alternative playlist staple, their indie rock is dreamy – unfussy, moody, alluring, but still tight. Playing favorites like “Under the Sun” – the song I first discovered them through – the crowd was either banging their heads or glued to the performance in a trance-like stupor. There were a lot of howling fans in the crowd, and Smith kept up the conversation between songs. The band was relaxed and in no rush tuning in between songs; there were a lot of good-natured “f*ck its” to go around.
But between all of the laughs, there was something profoundly acute within their cool-blue sound. Prefacing a track, Smith candidly said it was “about doing drugs, but I don’t do drugs anymore”. “Dopamine” features lyrics alluding to that past:
Shots ringing out, I’m soaking
Eardrums shaking, years start weighin’ me down
Crawling out from a spiral down
Fixing now to mix the white and brown
Passing out, running in place
You’re the sun and I’m your cloud
Burning down, running in place
Got so high I finally felt like myself
But the performance wasn’t grave or weighted down. There was almond milk. Smith took requests multiple times, light-heartedly passing ones that didn’t feel right. The band seemed to be in their own performance-induced nirvana. Someone even ran on stage to dance and was escorted off (disclaimer: you’re not supposed to do that). I was happily stupefied the entire show, and hadn’t even noticed they stayed way past the scheduled end of the concert – 10:00 PM.
At 10:28, Smith announced that the band would be taking a break for some Silk almond milk. He then returned with Colin Caulfield (keyboard and guitar) to do a cover of Alex G’s “Soaker”, something Zachary said they never practiced or performed before. And then everyone got back on stage to play even more.
I didn’t walk out of the theater until 10:40, but I would have stayed if the show went even longer.
Listen to DIIV here:
(like I did obsessively for a long, long time)