Indie Pop/Post Punk group DIIV and Post Metal squad Deafheaven — two critically acclaimed and cultishly beloved bands who have tinkered with “Shoegaze” elements in very different ways throughout their careers — are teaming up for a U.S. tour this fall that brings them to Cincinnati's Ballroom at the Taft Theatre on Nov. 7.
While Brooklyn's DIIV has been noted for utilizing brighter, breezier shades of Shoegaze (a term created to describe the expansive, noisy ethereality of British bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride), the Bay Area-born Deafheaven comes from a much heavier, black-metallic place.
Both bands also appear to have gotten fed up with hearing the word "Shoegaze" in the past five years.
Deafheaven’s landmark 2013 album Sunbather allowed music critics to pull out the “Blackgaze” descriptor, though the band has tried to distance itself from such comparisons ever since.
The term "Shoegaze" has appeared in approximately 95.6 percent of DIIV reviews. The group has toured with Ride and, in a 2015 interview with a very Shoegaze-minded interviewer, band mastermind Zachary Cole Smith joked that the group was the “Sally Struthers of Shoegaze” (meaning they cry in commercials for the Christian Children’s Fund while staring at their boots and coaxing sheets of beautiful guitar feedback out of their amps?).
DIIV’s most recent album was 2016’s Is the Is Are and Smith has talked about working on new material since getting sober.
This morning, Deafheaven debuted the latest music video from their recently released album Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. Watch “Night People,” featuring Chelsea Wolfe, below.
Tickets for the bands’ Taft Theatre Ballroom show — on sale here this Friday at 11 a.m. — are $20 in advance or $25 day of show.
