Back To The Future With DIIV Live | Open Season 2025

DIIV, LUNAR DIRT

OPEN SEASON @ THE PRINCESS THEATRE, BRISBANE

SATURDAY, 14 JUNE 2025

WORDS: TARA DICKINSON

PHOTOS: CHRIS SEARLES

The intro music ominously pulses through a smoky red fog. Officiously, a satirical flat-toned AI video introduces the DIIV band members. The waxy-looking figures on the screen could be real or fake, and for the first of many instances this evening, we are asked to filter through visual noise and propaganda and decipher what is true. The band mirrors the flat effect of the video as they begin their set, part of Brisbane’s Open Season 2025.

The surreal Lunar Dirt has already laid out the dystopian soundtrack for the evening. The enigmatic two-piece act, consisting of live drums and keyboard, truly deserves a headline of their own.

Despite the competent warm-up act, it takes DIIV until their third song, "Brown Paper Bag," to connect with the crowd. The earnest and unassuming singer Zachary Cole Smith has little to say to the audience, letting the music do the heavy lifting. "Under the Sun," from the earlier release Is the Is Are, is when the mostly millennial crowd really ramps up the energy.

The band is visibly working very hard to craft their songs, which tonight are mainly drawn from their latest album, Frog in Boiling Water. Of similar tempo and with less effective execution, the set could have become monotone. This could be why the video interludes regularly interrupt the set. Unfortunately, this creates a side effect of dampening the atmosphere and momentum the songs build.

The charismatic guitarist Andrew Bailey poses as though he were ministering pronouncements with his guitar.

Conceptually, DIIV's live set picks up three decades later from where Radiohead’s OK Computer left off. Analogue projections of the lyrics accompany the songs, like doomscroll karaoke. The vintage single "Doused" ends the set, and we have come full circle, back to the future.