‘There is an alternative to capitalism’: after addiction and losing a home to LA wildfires, indie rockers Diiv start again

No stranger to rebuilding after disaster, the US band’s frontman Zachary Cole Smith now sees the entire capitalist project as ripe for reinvention, on a surprisingly upbeat new AG Cook-produced album

Zachary Cole Smith used to be a miserable interviewee. He had plenty to say – always generous, always voluble – but spoke with grim introspection, chastising himself and cataloguing his misdeeds with a fervour that engulfed him like his oversized T-shirts. A decade later, the Diiv frontman who materialises on my screen seems well rid of that old self. Suspiciously well rid of it, perhaps. He looks as if he has stepped out of a middle management meeting.

“Precisely!” Smith concurs cheerfully, speaking via video call from a back garden in La Cañada, California. “We’re trying to have a visual language, which is fun. We’ve never done that with what we wear.” The singer-guitarist, 41, wears thick-rimmed square glasses, slicked-back black hair and a pinstripe shirt, its neck clasped by a tie printed with stock market emblems. He has an earnest but pranksterish energy. He uses the word “fun” so many times – more than a dozen within 10 minutes – that I suspect he is testing some sort of subliminal PR strategy.