DJO (2025)

One Liner: One of the Stranger Things actors making good psych and indie rock.

Wikipedia Genre:  neo-psychedelia, indie rock, psychedelic rock, synth-pop
Home: L.A. (born in Massachusetts, college in Chicago, but he's bound to live in L.A. now, right?)

Poster Position: Top Quarter - Line 2
Both Weekends.  

Saturday.

Ladybird Stage at 7:30

Thoughts:  He was supposed to come in 2022, but he actually bailed at the last minute.  On Insta, he shared a cryptic message saying that an unfortunate last minute scheduling conflict is causing him to miss.  But it was a month and a half prior to the Fest.  What is last minute?  You've got a month and a half to get it fixed!  But, since then, he has grown significantly in popularity.

Before I understood who this was, I was slightly confused.  Here was my digging into that in 2022... Always fun to have someone like this on the poster, where I get to find out that Djo is a Portugese futsal player, DJO is a manufacturer of medical devices (headquartered in Lewisville, Texas!), DJO High is Bishop Denis J. O'Connell High School (high school of Eric Metcalf!), Djo d'Eloy is a Cape Verdean singer (whose greatest song is "Arriola"!), Djo Mpeko is a footballer (a defender for the Girabola!), Djo Tunda Wa Munga is a film director (winner of the 2011 MTV Music Awards for Best African Movie!), AND HE IS ALSO THE OLDER BROTHER IN STRANGER THINGS!?!?!

Of all the things I did not expect to happen today, way way way high on the list would be to click on the listing for Djo and see that it is the stage name for Joe Keery's music career, when he is not starring as Steve Harrington in Stranger Things or the movie Free Guy or the fifth season of Fargo (as a super psycho Sheriff Deputy).  Fascinating.  He went to DePaul University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting.  In his musical career, he apparently started out by releasing music under the name Cool Cool Cool, but then became a guitarist for a band called Post Animal for a few albums.  According to one interview I read, he said that the fame from Stranger Things made that weird because the rest of the band didn't want to just be the "guy from Stranger Things" band - but they've stayed friends and he's gotten their help on making his solo album.  In 2019, he started releasing music under the Djo name.

And you know what?  It's actually pretty solid!  Kinda low key indie psych rock.  Think super basic Tame Impala.  One song, which I have heard in the interim on the radio a good bit, is for sure the megahit with 1.58 BILLION streams.  Damn.  "End of Beginning."

Good, chill, nugget for me.  I dig the groove.  Part of me wanted to come to this post with the angle of whether or not he would have gotten this far on the ACL poster if he wasn't the Stranger Things guy.  Like, would he have separated himself from the other indie rock out there without that slice of pop culture notoriety?  Almost like a nepo-baby thing, but instead of a famous mom, being cast on a wildly popular show.  But after churning through these songs for a day, this is legitimate.  I dig it.

Well, then I have to say that the 2020 single "Keep Your Head Up" is not my favorite.  Too much falsetto, too much saxophone, too much squelchy synths.  The stuff from the 2019 album Twenty Twenty is much better.  The second most streamed tune from that album, called "Roddy," has 102.4 million streams.

Pretty good tune - nothing particularly stands out in there, but good guitar and vocals and a nice little groove.  The synth voice thing in the middle, straight out of Ferris Bueller, is a little weird, but otherwise it is a solid tune.  "Chateau (Feel Alright)" is the other big song, with 142.9 million streams and a similarly woozy rock sound.

Nice chill tune.  Brings me some Beck vibes.  "Mutual Future" has some Strokes vibes, but also some jam band guitarage near the end.  "BNBG," with its ridiculous outro of repeatedly saying "babygirl," is a massively cringe inducing moment.  "Personal Lies" kicks in with a pop rock swagger, but then devolves into a spacey meander.  I like it.

After that disc, you get 2022's DECIDE, which includes that mega-hit posted up above.  Nothing else on there comes anywhere close to that level of excitement.  The top song otherwise has 33 million streams.  Finally, you get 2025's The Crux, which is pretty good as well.  The title song has a Beatles piano ballad vibe to it.  The bigger song is "Basic Being Basic," but I like "Delete Ya" much better.  20.4 million streams.

Again, nice groove to go with a catchy tune.  Sort of a The Cars vibe in there to my ear.

I'm in.  A little shocked at that decision with where my head was pointed when I started this, but I like it.