INTERVIEW
Diary Find Their Own Way Through the Strange and Familiar on Spiral Bound.
There is a wonderful accident behind “Drive It,” one of the standout songs on Diary’s debut album Spiral Bound. It began as a heavy, distorted demo that guitarist Chris Croarkin remembers sounding almost like A Place to Bury Strangers.
– WORDS BY CJ
He had prepared an appropriately noisy arrangement when the band met to rehearse, but their then-bassist Giancarlo began playing the original riff and Chris didn’t recognize it. Instead of following the song they had planned, he started improvising. The drummer joined in, apparently without realizing what they were playing either, and something entirely different emerged: a lighter, hypnotic track with a persistent dance rhythm and spacious guitar passages. Nobody set out to write the version that ended up on the record. Chris still likes the original enough that he briefly considered releasing both arrangements, as bands sometimes did with radically different versions of the same single. But the accident had unlocked a different song, and they followed it.
That willingness to let a song become something unexpected runs through Spiral Bound, an album that feels like the arrival of a band who have spent several years working out exactly what they want to sound like. The New York group’s earlier recordings were hazier, their melodies often partly concealed beneath layers of reverb. Here the guitars are brighter, the rhythms more assertive, and the choruses sometimes enormous. It still sounds unmistakably like Diary, but there’s a new directness in the writing, as though they’ve become comfortable enough with their own instincts to stop obscuring them.
Vocalist Kevin Bendis and Chris first connected through a shared affection for British guitar music. The Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen and the Stone Roses have remained musical touchstones, while Johnny Marr’s playing has found its way into their own guitar vocabulary. Diary’s name even contains a loose reference to a lyric from Morrissey’s “Suedehead.” But Chris is quick to point out that there was never a conversation about deliberately reproducing any of those sounds. They had listened to these records for so long that aspects of them appeared naturally. As their own music developed, those familiar influences became the starting point for something less easily categorized. Labels like shoegaze or baggy don’t quite account for music that is equally interested in melodic precision and forward momentum.
The biggest change on Spiral Bound is the confidence to make straightforward, great pop songs. “We want this to be a real big pop song,” Kevin remembers them thinking, rather than automatically covering every melody in effects.
PHOTO BY Luke Ivanovich
That decision was partly a consequence of time. The pair had played together long enough to trust each other’s ideas, and increasingly they wanted the listener to hear those ideas without having to search for them. The record’s expansive moments aren’t really a departure from Diary’s earlier work; they are songs the band might once have hidden inside a cloud of distortion.
The album itself took a winding route into existence. They had been writing and recording material for a full-length since 2022, but when they approached Kanine Records with their plans, the label suggested another EP first. Several intended album songs went onto that release, leaving Kevin and Chris to write more. By the time they began sessions with Bodega’s Ben Hozie, five tracks had already been recorded, while others were new or needed rebuilding. Hozie didn’t produce the entire album, but his perspective changed how they heard several songs, particularly the opening track, “Keep Comin’ Up.”
Chris had assembled a collection of instrumental sections and Kevin had worked out the lyrics and choruses, but neither was entirely sure how they should fit together. In the studio, Hozie directed the band through the changes until they had an eight-minute version that Chris imagined might become an extended album closer. Hozie disagreed. He heard a single, and suggested it should open the record. He helped cut it into something more compact, while also encouraging stronger rhythms and vocals that didn’t disappear into the arrangement. The band resisted some suggestions initially, but lived with them and eventually recognized what he was hearing. The result is a huge, euphoric introduction that makes their new ambitions immediately apparent. Neither musician describes the experience as some dramatic reinvention. They simply discovered that singing out and giving the rhythmic passages more prominence could bring an entirely different character to a song.
“Drive It” takes that sense of movement somewhere stranger. Kevin traces its lyrics to a night in Philadelphia when he and some college friends went to The Barbary for a dance night devoted to Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. Their driver had borrowed his grandmother’s enormous old car, whose power steering failed before the journey home. They went anyway, struggling to wrestle the vehicle around corners, getting lost and taking hours to return. The song isn’t a direct retelling. What stayed with Kevin was the sensation of travelling endlessly without getting anywhere, of an ordinary night acquiring an almost dreamlike unreality.
That interest in particular memories gives Spiral Bound much of its personality. On “Already Dead,” an unhappy relationship is recalled with a theatrical, almost gleeful sense of humor. Kevin likes the contrast between painful material and an upbeat song, another lesson absorbed from The Smiths, and he’s drawn to small details that locate an experience in time.
PHOTO BY Cal Glorioso
An old MP3 reference can do more to summon a particular period than an elaborate explanation. “The Same Door” works similarly, drawing the listener into moments that feel remembered rather than invented.
But alongside these familiar objects are tarot cards, psychic imagery and hints of the supernatural. “Spook Rock” takes its name from a real landmark in New York’s Hudson Valley, associated with local folklore about two lovers swept away in a flood. Kevin grew up in upstate New York, and the place offered a way to write about the peculiar atmosphere of the countryside without simply describing its scenery. He and Chris share a fascination with David Lynch and Twin Peaks, where the everyday world always seems capable of revealing another, less comprehensible one.
More recently, Kevin has been listening closely to Psychic TV, attracted to the way Genesis P-Orridge mixed pop, psychedelia and occult imagery. He enjoys not quite knowing whether a supernatural reference is being offered sincerely, mischievously or somewhere between the two. That’s an important part of Diary’s appeal. These are accessible guitar songs, but the details remain a little slippery; a drive home becomes an endless journey, and a rock beside a stream carries an entire imagined history.
Spiral Bound released on September 4th, 2026
For all its supernatural detours, Spiral Bound is also a record about a very practical kind of persistence. The band have weathered lineup changes, including Chris’s move from bass to guitar, and spent years recording songs that didn’t always find their final form immediately.
They talk now about feeling more settled as a group, and more excited about what might follow. Recent recognition on streaming playlists has offered encouragement, while plans are forming for another UK tour and a first run of shows in mainland Europe. They remain attached to New York’s independent music community, where familiar faces and bands still support one another despite the difficulties of keeping a group going.
What makes Spiral Bound so rewarding is the sense that nothing here needed to happen quickly. Some songs date back years; others changed beyond recognition after one rehearsal or a producer’s suggestion.
Its musical references are easy enough to identify, but the finished record doesn’t feel like an exercise in assembling them. Each song retains its own peculiar history, including the false starts and chance discoveries that might once have been edited out. Diary have taken their time, followed the moments that surprised them and arrived at something that finally sounds completely their own.
