Bringing a kid into our declining world is terrifying
But underrated? Profound gems from DIIV’s Cole Smith, plus our favorite sneakers get a restock & more
Our roundup of the Best Pants Out is here.
Check our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.
The Coolest Museum Shops are here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
Jonah & Erin
Blackbird Spyplane back with you. In today’s sletter:
Our pick for the No. 1 sneakers of 2023 sold out of their limited run SPEEDILY last December — but they finally get a restock today.
Our No. 1 independent designer of 2023 has a tight new capsule dropping tomorrow, too.
Having a child is underrated ?!
And more.
Let’s get to it —
Sparking things off, it’s time for an out-of-the-ordinary edition of V.I.P. R.A.DA.R., where Vibey Illustrious People share Rare and Dope A** Recommendations with us…
This one features a mix of practical and philosophical gems courtesy of a thoughtful & swagged-out guest who took the conversation to many beautifully unexpected places…
Zachary Cole Smith sings & plays guitar in the NYC band DIIV, whose music has been hitting our ’80s-and-’90s-ed-out fuzzy windswept dreamy guitar-rock sweet spot since 2012. Tomorrow they’re putting out a great new album, Frog in Boiling Water. We really love their last LP, 2019’s Deceiver, which was full of lush, heavy songs about addiction and regret. This one is full of lush, heavy songs about yearning to live purposefully against a backdrop of slow-motion global cataclysm…
Also? Cole wears cool clothes and looks cool in them. All of which means I was eager to hop on the Spyphone with him the other day & chop it up.
Blackbird Spyplane: We care a lot about pants here, and if someone wants to tell the modern people’s history of cool pants, I think they’ve got to give you credit for coming extremely early to the current big-pants wave. You were wearing enormous pants in like 2012, back when some of today’s jumbo-trouser-rockers were still in (skinny??) diapers! Did you feel lonely? Did you doubt yourself? Did you say, D*mn, nobody else’s pants look as cool as mine?
Cole Smith: “I’m still a fan of big pants, I just alternate between pleated and not pleated. There was probably an element back then of some body dysmorphia I was unaware of — an attempt to ‘correct’ my silhouette. Because I’m skinny, I wear a 28 waist, and I’ve never been a fan of tailored stuff, because for me personally, it makes me look like a pencil. But yeah a lot of my style icons are the older guys I see at the mall in big, saggy pants.”
Blackbird Spyplane: You’re one of the co-founders of the United Musicians and Allied Workers. We all have a general sense that the streaming landscape sucks for musicians, even the enormous ones: I just saw that Kendrick Lamar grossed a measly $260K on 60 million streams for “Not Like Us.” You’ve been touring and putting out indie records for a decade now — what’s the situation on the ground if you want to make music without working 5 other jobs?
Cole Smith: “Yeah, so UMAW started as an offshoot of No Music for ICE, which was this movement of musicians boycotting Am*zon’s collaboration with ICE. During Covid we were like, ‘Man, musicians should form a coalition and talk about their material concerns.’ The industry pits us against each other, you know, this idea that there’s only so many festival slots or Best New Music slots — but the reality is, we share an employer, so we face similar issues.
“As far as the streaming platforms, they’re tech companies using music as fodder, and the money isn’t going to the musicians. And even beyond that, you have the whole history of all recorded music at your fingertips for no money, and that devalues music in general. It doesn’t properly express the work that goes into it, and it certainly doesn’t express how essential music is to the human experience.”
Blackbird Spyplane: OK — please put us on to your 3 Rare and Dope A** Recommendations.
Cole Smith: “OK so the first one is, I feel like having a child is underrated. I have a one-year-old kid, and it’s had the most profound, radical, beautiful effect on my life. There’s so much fear around that choice, and the gymnastics around the decision were really difficult. Financially, there’s always this feeling of, It isn’t possible. But my message to counteract that fear is, It’s doable, and I’ve never experienced such a profound sense of love and meaning.”
Blackbird Spyplane: There’s financial anxiety and there’s climate dread, too — like in First Reformed where the environmental activist is so tortured about bringing a child into this world.
Cole Smith: “Yeah, great flick, by the way. In terms of climate, there’s this mythology pushed by oil companies around a ‘footprint’ or personal responsibility, which is them shirking their responsibility. It’s a propaganda campaign. But it’s true, bringing a child into a rapidly declining world is terrifying. Writing about that on the new record, the salve I found is having some kind of meaning in your personal life that keeps you going, because otherwise it’s absolutely crushing. You have to live your life. You have to continue. And the thing for me was parenthood: That’s what gave my life meaning where I’d been searching for it.”
Blackbird Spyplane: D*mn. Hard to follow that, but your next pick is the Miyoo Mini. What is this?
Cole Smith: “I don’t have a ton of time for gaming, and it’s kind of hard to find a way to do it touring, but I do enjoy it, and the Miyoo Mini is this little handheld emulator that looks like a Game Boy and plays vintage Sega, Super Nintendo, and PlayStation 1 games. The aesthetics and the worlds of those old games are so beautiful and cool, and I’ve played through a lot of games I grew up with. You purchase the thing for under $100, then there’s a page that tells you how to find and install games. It’s like a very anarchist-utopia, peer-to-peer community kind of thing.”
Blackbird Spyplane: That’s sick. F**k an app store.
Cole Smith: “And my third recommendation is just the idea of sampling yourself. Sampling yourself is so fun to me, because you might make a song, and it sucks, but instead of throwing it in the trash, you chop it up and use it as a sample. I highly recommend it.”
Blackbird Spyplane: It’s interesting to think about how to apply that idea outside music-making, too. Removing things you’ve done from their original context, tweaking them, and maybe discovering new things about yourself in the process…
Cole Smith: “Maybe it could be quoting yourself in conversation. That’s a kind of cool idea. ‘As a wise man once said…’”
Blackbird Spyplane: Hahaha, and maybe your quote achieves new meanings over time, or shapeshifts into something entirely different — like an old Steve Reich tape-loop piece going out of phase…
DIIV’s new LP, Frog in the Water, is great. It comes out tomorrow, and you can find it here. The band is on Instagram here, where their whole album rollout has been a trip…
Meanwhile —
In our 2023 Slappy Awards, back in December, we named our favorite sneakers of the year, unranked except for the big-gas pair at No. 1.
You know what happened next: Stock was limited, Spy Nation mobbed through, and every single pair of these handsome, humble, tonal-swag-enhancing beauties evaporated with alacrity.
The other week, however, we got a note from the people behind them, sharing some exciting news — the sneakers are getting a restock, and it’s today: