Outside, the London weather last night may have taken a turn for the miserable, but inside Kentish Town’s O2 Forum the temperature could have given this week’s Spanish fiesta Primavera Sound a run for its money. Perhaps it was merely a broken air conditioner turning the heat up to 11, but we suspect it was more likely the sheer force of teenage pheromones out to greet the inaugural London outing of Djo: the musical guise of Stranger Things’ actor Joe Keery.
Long sold out and simmering with barely-controlled excitement, in some ways the feverous buzz in the venue made complete sense. Having made his birth name on one of the most popular shows of the past decade, his pen name was then thrust into the limelight by its own burst of TikTok virality when 2022 track End of Beginning - a wistful synth number about returning home to Chicago - was picked up and catapulted into the billion-streaming club last year. Essentially, Keery has been anointed by the internet twice over.
In other ways, last night’s show felt purposefully, pleasingly opposed to the algorithm. Keery might not have been travelling to the Upside Down with his hefty, seven-piece band, but he was clearly journeying far from the instant gratification of the modern music-consuming world. Instead, Djo’s catalogue - from the ELO-alike bounce of Charlie’s Garden to the Beatles-y main set-closing Potion, with its Dear Prudence-esque chorus - frequently harked back to decades past. Toasting recent third album The Crux and filling the stage with instruments and musicians (including two drummers), even visually the show looked like a ‘70s studio; a world away from the standard practice of 2025, where one laptop can contain everything.
Keery is clearly very much a musician, rather than one with an ‘actor-turned-’ prefix. And while the constant and recognisable stylistic hopping of his catalogue could sometimes feel like an enthusiastic fan showing you his record collection - a burst of The Strokes on Lonesome Is A State of Mind; a bit of Thin Lizzy on the classic rock’n’roll of Back On You - Djo wore it well. There was obvious skill and love for their craft here and, amped up by meticulous and dramatic arena-level lighting that should warrant its designer a raise, the aura was of a band of substance beneath all the giddy audience screaming.
Best was the strange one-two of 2019 debut album tracks Chateau (Feel Alright) and Roddy. The former, a woozy psych number packed with close-knit harmonies; the latter a brilliantly odd offering that devolved from satisfyingly classic melodies into a Daft Punk-meets-MGMT robotic breakdown, it showed that - even before the jump into big rooms - Djo was clearly always aiming high.
If his stage chat could do with a little work (there are only so many “Yeahs!” and whoops that one man can utter before you start to yearn for a tad more meaningful engagement), then the music around it primarily did the talking. A passion project that, three albums in, has turned into a cult phenomenon, perhaps the most impressive thing was how genuine his fandom seemed to be. There was no ‘phones up for the TikTok hook’ mentality - everyone knew every word to every song. If Keery could be the man to send a new generation back to a simpler time, then maybe that would be the strangest thing of all.
