The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: DIIV

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

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Who: DIIV

What: Deceiver

When: October 2019

Where: Captured Tracks

Why: The phoenix metaphor has been done countless times, but in a way the notion of rising from ashes isn't that out of place when it comes to talking about DIIV's third record, Deceiver. The album's dark, murky depths reflect the years between second LP Is The Is Are, a time of intense personal turmoil for Zachary Cole Smith. Even the album's title offers pause for thought - who's deceiver/who's been deceived? In these shadowy songs are words of forgiveness and loss, ruminations on bridges both built and burned, swirled in tremendous waves of beautifully grimy fuzz and drone. "No matter how things may change/don't turn away/you're present now/but the past is in your blood," found in "For The Guilty," really touches a nerve, and is essentially true of all of us. There's a little Deceiver in everyone. 

[posted 3.8.20]