By now, Djo is not a secret. The psychedelic electro-pop project led by Joe Keery, once an IYKYK solo bedroom-production artist, has reached the mainstream, making the festival circuit at Laneway, Coachella and Glastonbury. And Keery, an actor best known for playing foppish, helplessly winsome Steve Harrington on Stranger Things, has stepped out from the shadows of a persona initially meant to disguise his famous name; gone are the Scooby-Doo Shaggy-style wigs and costumes from Djo’s early performances, meant to dissociate any notion of the Upside Down from Keery’s longstanding interest in making music.
It worked, though in a manner befitting a preternaturally charming and thoughtful celebrity who seemingly courts good fortune: by accident. Djo, pronounced like his first name, blew up not because he was “the guy from Stranger Things”, but because he inadvertently caught a rogue wave of virality. End of Beginning, a synth-y, nostalgic ode to a past version of oneself, became a TikTok track, a million videos soundtracked to Keery’s wistful “and when I’m back in Chicago, I feel it”, largely without knowledge of the name. The song racked up more than 1.4bn streams in 2024, two years after its release on Djo’s second album, Decide.
Stranger Things may be gearing up for its final season, but the music is the show now. Keery made no mention of any of this context at the third of three sold-out shows at Brooklyn Steel for the Back on You tour, nor did he need to. As evidenced by the sheer amount of cheeky, anxiety-laced lyrics shouted back at him on Wednesday night, the crowd was here for a hit of Djo – modern dread, ennui and revelation in psych-rock form, fleshed out with a six-member band and clear rock-star ambition. “WHY TRYYYYYY”, Keery wailed in opener Runner, accompanied by a gunshot bass, one of many hooks on which the largely twentysomething crowd hung their inhibitions. (Another, off live standout Roddy: “There’s somethin’ wrong with this world / I feel it coming on / And contradictions take their toll / Is that where we went wrong?”)
Keery is a clear student of the classics: Djo’s new album The Crux, released last month, is an irrepressibly catchy, if at times incoherent, genre mix that wears its inspirations on its sleeve, from Steely Dan to the Police, Fleetwood Mac to Tame Impala, Keery talk-singing with the shaggy world-weariness of Julian Casablancas. As a frontman, Keery channels each in a masterful performance of a rock star, guitar-slinging swagger and an ability to be funny just by bending “new yorkkkkk” into different shapes over and over. Keery has enough natural charisma to get away with giving little in stage banter; even bumbling the microphone came off as endearing (“New York! You made me drop my mic! I like it” is the most revealing the night got).
The band clearly wants the music to speak for itself – and for the most part, it does. The electrified 1975-esque listicle in new single Basic Being Basic, as accompanied word-for-word by the crowd, elided any winking humor into an exorcism of boredom. Chateau (Feel Alright) blossomed from almost too-quiet meditation, finally showcasing Keery’s lovely singing voice, into full vibe-out drowning in guitar. In person, despite my ample cynicism over the TikTok-ification of music and the proliferation of phones at concerts, and Keery’s own wariness of a single snippet overtaking everything else, End of Beginning gave me goosebumps – a glittering three-minute hymn to the passage of time, the obvious choice for a finale wisely held four songs before it. (And with fewer phones than I expected, as if the crowd knew to heed his longstanding lack of interest in social media.)
Some of Djo’s lo-fi, talky tracks translated to the crowded 70s studio-style stage – six band members, two drum kits, at least five keyboards and more guitars than I could count – better than others. A few that started out boppy, such as The Crux opener Lonesome Is a State of Mind, soaked up the full band into a punch of sound and swagger. Others, such as album standout Delete Ya, drowned out Keery’s voice, which flickered in the lower registers and at times buckled under the band’s weight. The show as a whole teetered a bit uneasily between full rock band energy and something vibier, more meditative and knowing. If Djo has a preferred direction, it seems to be the former, based on the 10-person finale with his opener, Post Animal, the Chicago psych-rock band with whom Keery used to play guitar; that song, Flash Mountain, burnt off all remaining hearing with a fireworks show of guitar shredding (complimentary).
The torrent of pent-up musical energy felt earned – despite what people may assume to be a lark, Keery, his band and his former mates in Post Animal have been at this for a long, long time. “This is really special for us,” Keery said mid-show, referring to the New York venue and, perhaps inadvertently, the mutating nature of Djo – once a solo project, now an entity, still stealthily absorbing the fame.
