If Skin Game and Taker – both taken from DIIV’s forthcoming Deceiver full-length – evidenced respectively lighter and darker sides, then Blankenship navigates at times stormy territories between the two. It’s typically propulsive – latently optimistic, even – yet has a sometimes unsettling haste to it; not least when Zachary Cole Smith and Andrew Bailey trade Seattleite riffs so thunderous that it sounds as though they’re lancing with satellites. Compelling in ways that Is the Is Are never was and more composed than Oshin ever could’ve been, yet more effusive flattery surely awaits Deceiver next month…
Deceiver is available from October 4th via Captured Tracks.