DIIV's Z. Cole Smith Q&A: Firework Mishaps, Exploding Blenders and Those Classic Cotton Commercials

Posted on Jun 26th 2012 4:20PM by Theo Bark

Sandy Kim

One of the acts we were most curious to check out at SXSW this past year, Dive's audience for their Fader Fort set was sparse, but front man Z. Cole Smith, who moonlights as a guitarist for Beach Fossils, played as if blissfully oblivious, flitting around the stage in a manic haze. The rest of the band, hair in their faces, played their shoegazy Kraut-influenced indie rock with similar energy, Cole's dreamy, reverb-heavy vocals washing over the jangly guitars on 7-nch standouts "Sometime," "Corvalis" and their single "How Long Have You Known."

Catching up with Cole a month later in Los Angeles while Dive were ankle-deep into their tour with Frankie Rose, revealed a band in flux, still a few steps ahead of its following, as the young guitarist excitedly relayed tales of transmission failures, music-video mishaps and the various joys of a new band on the road. It was clear that in a short period of time, the project, which began with Cole's home recordings, had grown legs.

Though Cole has since changed the band's name to DIIV to match the title of their similarly misspelled forthcoming debut Oshin (and to avoid confusion with a preexisting band), he did so with similar candor, announcing "I don't really give a fuck what the band is called. I originated this project in a bedroom with no internet and didn't know if it would ever leave the bedroom."

With a national tour completed, and a debut LP in stores now, Cole's bedroom project has solidified itself as a band to watch -- and one of the year's best discoveries.

How's the tour going so far?

The tour is good, our van broke down halfway through, and we got stuck in Austin and then had to catch up. It's crazy, you fall behind two days and we had to do two 12 or 13-hour days straight to get from Austin to San Diego yesterday. It was wild.

We're on the full U.S. with Frankie [Rose]. The transmission was starting to fuck up, then we get to Austin, it died as soon as we got to town, and I was like "All right, this is kinda the best time for this to happen." We got a new transmission, which is like $1500, and then it was funny because our friend Timmy hooked us up with the super last-minute show at this big ballroom with ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead who are pretty big, and we got on the bill that day. I just called him on a whim. I e-mailed our booking agent too, I was like "Yo, do you think we can get on this bill?" and he was like "No, they booked this a long time ago," and they put us main support at the last second, like two hours before the thing. I was like "Whoa."

You just shot your video for "How Long Have You Known." What as that like?

I was shooting off this roman candle inside this small room, inside a blender that was on, full of the inside of a lava lamp. Kinda insane, broke the lava lamp. You'll see the video, I guess, sometime. The roman candle was way too strong and it shattered the fucking glass in the blender while it was on. The blade went flying and the blender exploded, and all the wax went everywhere. I was trying to run out of the room because the roman candle was still going off. Everybody was screaming, and I was running out and slipped because of the wax, and this candle was shooting. It sounded like gun shots in this small room. I ran outside and everybody was covered in this pink wax and all the rented camera gear was covered in wax and shit. But I feel like the video is gonna be kinda cooler for it, 'cause it was like, I liked it before, but now it seems more weird and unexpected. The guy was like "This seems like a big budget video now!" and I was like "Yeah, it probably looks like we spent more than $150, now we have to buy a new blender."

Watch DIIV's "How Long Have You Known" Video

And is that a song that you guys all wrote together? I know you wrote the first songs by yourself.

Yeah, I wrote everything on the record, all the parts, everything. And then I recorded everything and -- you did your homework, man -- and then I re-recorded everything in the studio, if the band was there I would be like "Hey, do you want to record a part?" but mostly I was by myself, and I produced it. That song, basically, was unchanged from my original demo.

And the rest of the album, did you change the style from the original recordings at all?

It's different. The original demos sound kind of flat, now that I listen to them. I feel like I created this band as a live band, that's always what I wanted to do. I wanted it to be social, and I wanted it to go out into the world and like play music, so I just made these songs that would work live. I didn't really want to do a record for a little while.

Before Dive, you were also playing in bands, so you were planning to be a musician at some point, right?

Kinda. I just kinda fell into it. I never really wanted to get into music, per se. It was in my blood, I guess, because my dad's a musician. I guess I secretly wanted to do it, but I don't know. What actually happened was, I was living in New York City, totally random, just moved to NYC for no reason. I met some girl and moved into her house the day I met her, and had gotten kicked out of college and had nothing to really do, so one day I was just hanging out at a bar, and I was like "Man, I need a job," so I applied for this job at this vegan restaurant,
Angelica's Kitchen. I walk in the front door, and this dude came up to me and I'm like "Hey man, are you hiring?" He's like "No, but do you play bass?" And I was like "Yeah, I do," and so he gave me his number, and I started playing bass in his band, and that was the first band I was ever in. He's my friend Nikki, he plays in that band Friends.

Oh yeah, they're good.

All those kids in that band are all my best friends, from Angelica's Kitchen. Three out of the five members of that band worked at Angelica's Kitchen for over a year, Matt worked there for like five years, and Nikki worked there like eight years.

And where are you from originally?

Connecticut. I was born in New York, and I guess my parents moved to Connecticut when I was like six or five or something. I ended up going to high school in Manhattan, and now my mom lives on the Upper east side, and my dad lives here, or, in S.F.

So your dad wrote the "touch, the feel of cotton" song, that's pretty crazy. Which do you prefer, the Aaron Neville version or...

Aaron Neville version. Yeah, no. Oh, shit! No, the Richie Havens one, man. The Richie Havens one just has more soul. And it's longer, too. The Aaron Neville one is only 30 seconds long, and the Richie Havens one is a minute and a half long.

The commercial's different, too.

Well, that's the one that I really fell in with. And my neighbor growing up, this old woman named Beulah, is in it. I wonder where all those other kids are. Actually, it's funny, I was trying to figure out who all the people in the video were, like "Man, I wonder if I know who any of these people are, if they're like, related to my family in some way," and then the first comment on YouTube is like "That's me in the pink overalls." The kid who was one of the kids in the thing, she's probably older than me now, we're reliving our glory days on YouTube, but I actually I couldn't find out who she was. She had no public YouTube profile, but she probably was my long-lost girlfriend when I was like 5 or something.

That's ill. What are you singing about? I know your dad inspired some of the songs.

There are two categories: Ones that are super persona and about my life, about my dad, different girlfriends I've had and different parts of my life, different stages, entering a new relationship or exiting one, or being way over it, or whatever. And then using the thing with my dad as something more emotionally accessible -- I can be really sad about a girlfriend, but if it's like, two years later, I can't really be like sad about it. When its family, then I can access pretty heavy emotions pretty quickly, just by thinking about it. There's personal stuff, and then there's songs that are just about the world, and the way things are.

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