By the time Stranger Things finally sinks into the Upside Down for good, Joe Keery might be known as “the guy from Djo.” For all their attempts to strip the magic and unpredictability out of music consumption, Spotify and TikTok algorithms occasionally create rogue waves that thrust dormant deep cuts like “End of the Beginning,” a low-key slice of synth-pop from Djo’s second album, Decide, to streaming numbers measured in billions. It doesn’t even take a great hook; sometimes just one line will do. “When I’m back in Chicago, I feel it” raises some questions, namely, what is it about Chicago and what even is it? Yet the fuzziness of that line hit the viral bliss point. The Crux proves Keery’s unexpected hit was not just a fluke: Djo’s now highly anticipated third album is filled with vibey prompts, winking self-reference, and nagging melodies, a jukebox stocked with the past 20 years of quirked-up white boys with a little bit of swag. Which feels like the exact opposite of what Keery intended.
The Crux is an album that aspires to reviews sprinkled with words like “wry,” “writerly,” or better yet, “gimlet-eyed.” Combined with Djo’s new lean toward streetwise power-pop and mandatory Steely Dan influence, they’d also take “L.A. album.” Keery described it as a concept record, “a hotel housing guests who are all, in one way or another, at crossroads in their life.” If that sounds like one of those ensemble cast whodunnits cluttering prestige TV these days, wouldn’t you know, the songs themselves replicate bumper music in Netflix house style: “Have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.”
Lead single “Basic Being Basic” is the most glaring example of Keery and co-songwriter Adam Thein’s tendency to mistake mere observation for insight. “I think you’re scared of being basic,” Keery chirps, but what does it mean to be basic? Do the basic realize they’re basic? Have critiques of social media progressed beyond “It’s ’cause you’re always on that damn phone,” or jokes about posting salads on Instagram? Is the “Love It If We Made It”-style monologue at the bridge a sneak diss at the 1975 or Keery cribbing their notes? The verses offer no answers; they’re just here to support a song that considered its work done once it dropped “basic” in the chorus. Or maybe this Obama-core indie pop is a form of 4D chess mastery, meeting the “cheugy-phobes” on their own terms; when Keery falsettos on the chorus, I can taste the molecular cocktails and see the “Beets Don’t Kale My Vibe” tote bags anew.
“I just graduated/Top of my class/Furthest from last/So why do I feel so bad?,” “There she is, gap-tooth smile/God, how lucky can a simple man be?”: These feel like the start of character sketches, and they remain that way, insofar as that their subjects are sketched, rather than fleshed out. We rarely get to know the people in the songs, so much as the artists upon whom they were modeled. Keery can do the world-weary monotone of Julian Casablancas (“Delete Ya”) and googly-eyed McCartney worship (“Charlie’s Garden”), but both stop at homage. “Fly” nicks the gorgeously shrugged harmonies of Andy Shauf, which only highlights The Crux’s lack of commitment to a coherent narrative. Derivative as it is, it’s all performed with care and craft, a frictionless blend of styles that feels a bit uncanny, like music you could imagine in a faux Urban Outfitters at Starcourt Mall. But there’s a sense The Crux aspires to something greater. How else to explain the children’s choir that pops up during “Back on You”? The bigger question: What’s the defining artistic quality, aside from the fact that “the guy from Stranger Things” made it?
You would think the “vanity project” allegations were a thing of the distant past; until 2019, Keery was a member of Chicago psych-rock staple Post Animal and he’s spent much of the past decade winning over music critics the way most actors do, by owning a cooler-than-average record collection. Keery has, understandably, been cagey about making himself the overt subject of Djo’s music—witness the wigs and the winking band name. But the most interesting character on The Crux is, most likely, himself. “Delete Ya” suffers from a too-cute chorus, but the lyrics paint a picture of someone stuck between stations in life, famous enough to split time between Hollywood and the East Village but taking redeye flights one minute and sleeping on couches the next. It’s a rare moment where Keery gets to be “the guy from Post Animal,” “the guy from Stranger Things,” “the guy from Fargo,” and “the guy from Djo” all at once. In other words, himself.
