Djo at the Forum
Joe Keery walks out on stage with a baseball cap clouding his head, cast down towards his guitar. Surrounded by a six-piece band – including two drummers, multiple guitarists and keyboardists, and a bassist – a blinding array of lights and the opening synthesised beats of Runner, Keery and co make clear from the start that a Djo show is no ordinary one.
Djo emerged from Keery’s brain as a solo project in 2019. The Stranger Things actor had tried his hand at music before, including a tenure in Chicago psych-rock band Post Animal (now opening for Djo on tour). For his solo effort, Keery harnessed the warped instrumentation of Tame Impala and lyrics filled with existential dread and nostalgia. If the TikTok virality of End of Beginning from his second album, Decide (2022), proves anything, it is that Keery is carving a new form of synth rock that the digital age can latch on to.
Slowly peeling away the mystery that envelops him on stage, Keery becomes a charismatic presence that the audience cannot get enough of. Tracks like Gloom emphasise his spoken word drawl with the buzzing chords and keys belting through the amplifiers. His vocals are a melding of David Byrne’s quirky talk-sing with Julian Casablancas’s detached drone. It’s an infectious blend that keeps the audience shouting back his lyrics and mimicking every vocal flair. The songs from Djo’s newest album, The Crux (2025), garner equally emphatic praise to the classics. The poppy, echoing Basic Being Basic hears the crowd scream along to Keery’s life questions; the ringing of the ears are most loud with the lines, “I don’t want your money, I don’t care for fame / I don’t wanna live a life where that’s my big exchange.”
The show is a spectacle of literal highs and lows, as the band fluctuates from high-energy sprawls of guitars and drums to softer, melodic moments. Fans chant the lyrics of Charlie’s Garden (an uncanny mirror of the Beatles’s A Day In the Life) and groove with the slowed tempo of Chateau (Feel Alright). The group shows a tight-knit musicianship, honing their evident influences of garage rock, psychedelia and post-punk synth. They play and dance in tandem, and Keery raises his cup and sways along, praising the sea of people before him.
They close with Flash Mountain, inviting Post Animal on stage to accompany them for a jam session gone wild, an electro-clash that possessed the walls and ground to vibrate with every chord. Long gone are the days of Djo being a best-kept secret among fans; their London takeover is only the beginning.
Paulina Subia
Photos: Guifre de Peray
For further information and future events, visit Djo’s website here.
Watch the video for the single Basic Being Basic here:
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