Prior to 2024, Djo (the musical moniker of multi-hyphenate artist Joe Keery) was one of indie rock’s best-kept secrets. If you had a keen ear, you would likely recognize some of his songs off his debut album, 2019’s Twenty Twenty, playing in your local coffee shop. You may have looked up and thought, Oh, is this Djo playing? If you were lucky, you may have caught someone across the shop having a similar realization. You may have nodded at that person, smug that you were sharing in some sort of secret. That guy on your TV was making great music, unbeknownst to masses. 

Perhaps this was purposeful. At least, Keery certainly made it seem so. Donning a wig and sunglasses during performances and going by a stage name suggested that he was intent on drawing the line between the Joe Keery you were used to seeing on screen and the Djo that was making indie music magic- almost like a reversed Hannah Montana effect. 

Then came 2024. In the early months of the year, TikTok began to take hold of “End of Beginning,” a track off Djo’s 2022 sophomore album, Decide. Before long, the song was everywhere, making the term “viral hit” feel inadequate. By early March, the song had landed Keery on the Billboard Hot 100, where it debuted at number 51. By the end of the same month, it had broken the Top 20, and had begun to climb the charts in international markets. As 2024 drew to a close, Keery could boast over a billion streams of the song on Spotify alone, as the song smashed multiple streaming milestones. 

Suddenly, Djo was no longer a secret. The wig was off, the secret was out. Not only was the rest of the world aware of Djo, but also of the line between Joe and Djo. This only begged the question for longtime followers of Keery’s music: What did this mean for the future of Djo? 

If The Crux is to give us an answer, it means we can expect that the best is yet to come. 

The Crux feels like a bit of a departure from Djo’s previous two albums, which were heavy on the synthesizers and electronic tones. Songs like The Crux’s leading single, “Basic Being Basic,” assure longtime listeners that he’s not straying too far from his signature sound, but the overall production value of this album feels elevated. Departing from the self-produced stylings of Twenty Twenty and Decide, Keery and co-producer Adam Thein recorded this album in New York City’s iconic Electric Lady Studios, utilizing a wider range of instrumentations. This provides the opportunity for the album to have a wide scope of sonic stylings that feel influenced by everything from 70s soft rock to modern indie rock. 

“Golden Line,” a standout track, features Keery backed by a symphonic piano melody, feeling reminiscent of bands like Electric Light Orchestra or Let It Be-era Beatles, while “Charlie’s Garden” could almost be a cheeky nod to The Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden.” Yet, songs like “Lonesome Is A State Of Mind” feel like they could have belonged to modern bands like Vampire Weekend, while still feeling coherent with their vintage sounding counterparts.

Previous Djo albums brought songs that did not abide by classic song structures or time signatures, sticking to the repetitive rhythmic sounds that could go from zero to sixty without warning. Here, Keery is utilizing a more traditional approach to composition, showing off his songwriting skills in doing so. He can reflect on the dissolution of relationships, ask deep existential questions of the greater universe, and crack tongue-in-cheek jokes in one album, all while keeping it on a lucid track. It feels new, fresh, and like a classic Djo album all at once. In the ever-growing concept of an artist having different ‘eras,’ The Crux shows that Joe Keery can not only adapt to that idea but thrive in it, like a musical chameleon.

Also on display is Keery’s talent for creating cohesiveness in stacking an album. Each song flows seamlessly into the next. While The Crux is certainly not a concept album, it does seem to have a sort of overarching story, taking the listener on a perfectly paced journey of self-discovery. The album opens with a crestfallen Keery reflecting on the end of a significant relationship, and the first few tracks play out almost like his ride through the five stages of grief. He navigates everything from spiteful resentment (“Basic Being Basic”) to desperate heartbreak (“Delete Ya”) to even bargaining (“Potion”). But it all reaches a tipping point with the A side’s final track, “Egg,” where he reaches a moment of epiphany, releasing himself from it all. 

“I’m running through the snow again/ When will spring come again? / I need the bloom,” opens Side B’s “Fly,” representing a break away, launching the album into themes of the importance of community and taking a more optimistic approach to love and relationships.  “Back On You” is an upbeat and buoyant anthem for the importance of platonic love (and we need more of those!). “Gap Tooth Smile” (one of the album’s best songs) is a flirty ode to a dream woman that is laden with the charm of a Tom Petty track. Then, everything reaches a head with the album’s final track, “Crux,” neatly tying up the album’s core themes. Laying into that 70s classic rock sound, the album’s titular song feels almost like a victory lap, a complete cycle.

The Crux feels more personal to Keery than previous albums, with songs that throw his headspace front and center, as opposed to the more abstract electronic songs of its predecessors. But if there’s anything that the success of “End of Beginning” showed us, it’s that some of Keery’s best work comes from peeling back the curtain of vulnerability a bit. He is indubitably a talented composer and song producer (see: “Flash Mountain” from Twenty Twenty), but on The Crux, he’s reminding listeners of the beauty in shared experiences through lyrical songwriting. What results is a harmonic album that is arguably Keery’s best to date.  

The Crux will likely be cemented in Djo’s discography as an album that came at a time when the artist was on top of his game. But, its lyrical mastery, coupled with the upgraded production value, makes it not just Keery’s strongest entry to date, but one of the best albums of the year so far.