Gallery: Djo at Music Hall of Williamsburg
Photos by Emilio Herce
Last week, the era of Djo entered its next chapter, as Joe Keery announced his much-anticipated third album, The Crux. The record will come on the heels of “End of Beginning,” a non-single from his 2022 album DECIDE, capturing the hearts of millions.
The announcement of The Crux came alongside a new single, “Basic Being Basic,” which is bona fide phenomenal. It’s a two-and-a-half-minute bite of Oberheim OB-X8-fueled, synth-pop splendor. And Keery’s falsetto pitch shifts are pure technicolor. The song is a “shot fire to anyone who’s trying to be of the moment,” he says. There’s a line about Vera Bradley being in vogue that is so deliciously cheeky, and I’ve already got my first favorite misheard lyric of the year: “what a nifty epitaph that is” (the line is actually “what an empty epitaph that is”).
In March 2024, music editor Matt Mitchell sat down with Keery and went long on his rise to internet-wide virality after “End of Beginning” exploded on TikTok, amassed more than a billion streams, charted in 41 countries and went Platinum and Gold in nearly 20 territories.
“The cat’s out of the bag, and the cat is saying that Djo rules,” Mitchell wrote. “But many of us have been ringing that bell for a minute now. Thanks to TikTok becoming so firmly integral to the preservation, sharing and evolution of contemporary music culture, more folks are around to listen to those professions than ever before. Keery is always humming around with ideas, so it’s likely that he’s already well into working on the next album—and there’s a hope that he’ll be able to embrace his inner-Electric Light Orchestra and Supertramp fantasies, as his music continues to flourish in whatever space it’s given.”
Djo played a surprise show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday night. You can see pictures from the gig, taken by Emilio Herce, below.