DJO // THE CRUX: The Crossroads of Sound and Self

Apr 7

Side A:

Where Memories Are Linked and Lost
Written by: Syn Devereaux

Crux,(/krəks/) as defined on Google: the decisive or most important point at issue; a particular point of difficulty. See also: mid 17th century (denoting a representation of a cross, chiefly in crux ansata ‘ankh’, literally ‘cross with a handle’): from Latin, literally ‘cross’. See also: Djo’s (Joe Keery) third studio album.

We’ve all been there– legs swinging over the cliff of the crux of a situation, maybe several. Stomach knotted with what-ifs and possibility on the horizon. Maybe for you, it was a job, or a person, or a place you had to let go of. The crux isn’t picky. It hits you when it hits you– humbling you and knocking you flat on your face, knocking teeth out and scraping palms while you try and catch your fall. The Crux is unrelenting, whispering, “just trust me, you’ll be fine”. But if you’re lucky, the person it shapes you into is somebody fucking incredible.

For me, it was all of the above, and then some. Personally, I’m a wordsmith, amateur etymologist and music aficionado and can rewind my personal life tape to several crux moments. Most recently? Going through a category 5 break up and uprooting my entire life on the west coast to move to NYC. But more on that later, we’re not here for me. Not really anyway.

Back in January when it was announced that Djo’s third studio album would be released on April 4, it felt like eons until we’d all have it in our hands. But now, as of mid April, I can say that I’ve held the physical vinyl and it feels so good. A well earned album for Keery, yes, but especially for those also standing on that indecisive precipice.

Working with long time collaborator Adam Thein for their third album together, you can hear the evolution from TwentyTwenty to Decide all the way to The Crux. The trust, the collaborative brotherhood and the deep, iconic musical influences steeped in the walls and floorboards of Electric Lady Studios create a rich tapestry of sound and feeling. It’s clear that creating in such a legendary space as Electric Lady leaves its mark.

With the announcement of The Crux, we also got the first single, track two, Basic Being Basic. With a solid drum rhythm, punchy synths and lyrics setting the pace like a conversation, Basic is a meditation on disillusionment, cynicism, grief and identity. Sonically, it’s a bop for sure— I dance to it in the shower all the time. But lyrically– there’s an undercurrent of loss of innocence in love and the world; almost existential with, “It's like my capacity to love and give has changed”. It's a commentary on both personal heartbreak and the broader emotional bankruptcy of modern life.

Ouchy.

For me personally, this song couldn’t have come at a better, more emotionally charged time. Djo and I are the same age, and I also had a break up that lasted about as long and ended around the same time as his. You could say the parallels are paralleling. I realized very quickly that this album as a whole would become an emotional landing pad as I continue to sort through the aftermath mess of my own heartache.

Luckily, with Basic’s release, I was already well on the other side of a post-break up attitude. Having finally hammered the last nail in the coffin that November before, I was well on my way to being done-done. But grief isn’t linear, nor is she kind. Neither is the road to healing. It took me a few listens to really let it sit in my subconscious and marinate emotionally. The honesty and relatability in the lyrics was– and still is– a striking mirror for me.

The song walks like an emotional tightrope having just enough playfulness with the instrumentals, and in the same breath hits you with an uppercut with lyrics like, “Get food, barely eat/ Every bite just kept me glued to my seat/ I worried, even cried/ How'd it feel to take the light from my life?” We’ve all been there. Just this time last year, I was coming out of a very dark depression hole where I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t get out of bed, and my body was literally shutting down. When I first heard these lyrics, it was like I was looking at my past self through a crystal clear, ultra focused lens and it knocked me straight on my ass.

Again: ouchy.

Now, I could write a whole essay on just this song– and maybe I will– one day. But lucky reader, today isn’t that day. I have eleven whole other songs I want to talk about. Yes, eleven. The djokes write themselves. Okay… that’s the last one. Promise. (Maybe.)

Next up in album order: Lonesome Is A State Of Mind. Damn, right from the get, it’s a punch to the gut. My pre-listening prediction reads as follows: “Country vibes? DEFINITELY sad. Like maybe it's boppy? But I'm thinking HS (Harry Styles) self titled, ‘meet me in the hallway’ kind of opener. Gut punch. Set the scene.” I was lucky enough to attend not one, but two listening parties in NYC before the album was released. I was standing in a busy Generation Records in the heart of my personal energetic bermuda triangle (more on that later) and so, so ready.

The song, and album, open with a whispering and melancholic vintage mellotron and instantly you’re taken to the emotional stage of it all. It’s the moment right when act two goes into act three: the crux of it all. It’s post break-up, yes, but you’re still swimming in that confusion and liminality of it all. Instantly it feels conversational, like we’re two friends commiserating on the phone, sharing heartbreak at 2am, a little drunk until the beat pauses, then drops. The emotional climax sonically with the drums right after, “My future's not what I thought/ I think I thought it wrong” is just, chefs kiss. I have to say it: killer drum work, Wes. No notes.

That rhythm carries the song and had me tapping my foot the entire time on the vinyl flooring of Generation Records. Feet were planted, listening ears were on and body was bracing for impact. Definitely boppy and sad at the same time, as predicted. At 3:39, the synths come in and take the song to entirely new heights, finishing strong with “(Lonesome is a state of mind)/ Yeah, the future's over, don't drag me anymore, I'm done/ (Thought that you were on my side)/ (Lonesome is a state of mind) No, you're not lonely when you're hanging with yourself”.

Seguing into Basic after Lonesome was suuuuch a move, in my opinion. Both sonically and lyrically, it's a natural progression of the message at hand saying: “hi. I’m going through something.” As the listener, you don’t doubt that and for me personally, it took me to my own personal “crux” moments and by doing so, it hit me twelve times harder. Which, again, personally I think is the beauty of it and is a constant thread stitched from song to song throughout the album creating a rich tapestry of introspection, longing, grief and a dozen other emotional themes.

With track three, we open with Link and instantly I feel like I’m supposed to be in some sort of Ferris Beuller’s Day Off meets Coyote Ugly kind of movie montage. My pre-listen prediction reads, hilariously and crassly, “Lyrically: Maybe a little slutty? (sry) Like night on the town? Post break up type of way. OR! Like cosmic links. Like bigger picture stuff. Sonically: prince vibes. Idk why.” The guitars? Un. Fucking. Real. Gritty, and absolutely timeless and dare I say, slutty. But with a panache of emotional devastation: aka, my favorite genre. And you know what, yeah I DID say that, and I’d say it again.

It’s the kind of song that has you (me) unabashedly head banging my wild, red tendrils and moving my body in a way that few songs have that kind of chokehold on me. Maybe it’s because I work in a dive bar in the Village, but it’s the kind of song that just makes me want to let loose after too many chilled Fireball shots. Dance on top of a bar, start a flash mob in the middle of the street, kiss a stranger type vibes. So, see also again: slutty. Slutty in a way you can still bring home to mom and dad or even your grandma. It has a freedom and liberation that says, “Yeah, I walked through fire. But I’m still fucking here. Even if I feel like shit. But I won’t feel bad about that.”

The song starts off centered on disillusionment with success and self-sufficiency. Perfectly timed after Lonesome and Basic and their themes. His, “doing everything right” — “graduated top of my class”, he’s independent, he’s checking off all the grown-up boxes. But emotionally? It reads as feeling empty. The outside world says, “hey, you’ve arrived”, but inside it screams: “this can’t be it”. The fragmented pre-choruses feel disorienting in the all the right ways, just to circle back with, “HEY!” Landing strong to feel the depth of the emotional agitation and turning it into triumph– a well earned skinned knee, if you will. That tension is the song’s pulse and is carried throughout the album.

If Link is the feeling of being six drinks in, hair taped to your face in sweat, dancing unapologetically on the dancefloor, then Potion is the cool down– the come down– to the first three songs. The layering of guitars and Djo’s falsetto create a perfect balance in your ears and have you unconsciously swaying side to side. My pre-listen prediction reads, “Already sounds prince-y. Lyrically (from the snippet) v emotional and vulnerable.” If Lonesome was a drunk 2am phone call with a friend, Potion reads as something a little more sobering with lines like, “I'll try for all of my life/ Just to find someone who leaves on the light for me/ Leaves on the light for me”.

Its quiet introspection feels like blue dawn with a new lover with hushed confessions, staying up into the early hours of the morning, hearing the birds chirping, the city– and your heart– coming alive. The strings lend to its subtle vulnerability and are not only a breath of fresh air, but a perfect breeze to the emotional and musical rollercoaster we’ve been on so far.

It serves as an emotional balm or icepack to the throes we’ve been on and is so brilliantly placed. When I first heard it, it reminded me of Fleetwood Mac’s Never Going Back Again. Pimpdaddysadness on reddit said, “Potion is so George Harrison it hurts.” Classic rock musical influences are already so strong. I love that he picked up Travis picking for this– according to Google– is, “Travis picking is a fingerstyle guitar technique where the thumb plays a bass line while the index and middle fingers alternate playing treble notes, often in a syncopated rhythm. This style, named after Merle Travis, is commonly used in country music but is also found in various other genres.” The picking style brings something new to his discography you didn’t realize was missing.

Potion– bless her– is the calm before the absolute devastating emotional evisceration of Delete Ya. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: OUCHY. This was the second single before the album’s release and I’m not going to lie, this one really got me. Split me– cut me more like it– open, down the middle, right in half. “Oh god I wish I could delete ya”. And the “Oh my god” at 3:14 just… yeah, that’s all I have there.

Throughout my post-break up journey (and also very much while in the relationship), I had had moments where I begged the universe for a full expulsion of memories of this person. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, style. I could write an entire thesis on how and why I was Clementine Kruczynski and this person I was in a sick, twisted, codependent situationship with was Joel Barrish– but I won’t. At least not here. Eternal Sunshine is deeply personal to me, so much so, during the pandemic, when things were particularly rough for me, I had a spell where that movie was all I could watch and my art was heavily influenced by it and its themes. I had bought a tattoo gun early on in the pandemic and took to giving myself at-home tats. If you guessed that I gave myself a Clementine tattoo, you’d be correct. I wear her on my forearm with pride for my intensity and wild colored hair. She has flowers coming out of her head, a stylistic choice drawn by me to signify that things can grow from pain after all.

The motifs of the song, “red eye” and “Blue and Gold” also felt personal. You could argue that they’re just colors, and yeah, sure– they are. But along this journey I’ve been on to healing and growing: again, yeah, deeply personal. Right off the bat, “Then there's a lyric that, in context, stings/ The immediate pain it brings/ That song that you used to sing”– god, it’s so real. I have an entire playlist of songs called, “Musical Murder” that evoke this exact feeling. It’s being somewhere in public and hearing a song– that song– that takes you back and completely arrests your entire nervous system, completely dissociated from real life. It’s the entire crux of “music=memory”.

The honesty is as poignant as it is real which is why it hits so hard. Delete Ya cracks this album wide up like an egg. The perfect transition into track six. Which, speaking of….the Egg of it all is… *mutters to self: jesusfuckingchrist* Ahem. I’m fine. It’s fine. We are fine. My pre-listen prediction wasn’t too far off, reading: “EVERYONE. GETS. GHOSTED. That's my story and I'm STICKING TO IT. An anagram. But also about getting egg on your face. Being dumb. Looking dumb. For love? For whatever? I think it’ll also be the underdog. This one is gonna HURT. Don't ask me why.”

God does this one hurt. My journal I scrawled messily in at the second listening party at For The Record in Brooklyn– shoutout to Lucas– reads, “CRUNCHY GUITAR. HEAD TINGLES! GASPING FOR AIR. BOWIE!? ANGY BOI =( SAD BOI =( GONNA BE SO SICK LIVE. HORNS!?” All that, and more that I won’t share but damn. I feel like this song deserves its own twelve page paper, single spaced, MLA format, full thesis on the lyric meaning, the sonic easter eggs (ha!) and instrumentals. Because, respectfully– what the fuck, Joe. That yell at 3:06!? Yeah, I live there. The build ups, the “edging” my new friend, Evan said at the first listening party (crude? Maybe, but it’s the truth). WOOF.

The opening synths instantly grab you with intrigue. Downtown? Late at night? Yeah, been there. Walking the city at 3 am, no destination in mind. Just there, disoriented enough to not fully know where (or maybe who) you are, but enough to know you’re not lost. Or are you? This song feels like standing in a busy intersection or crosswalk at 7th Ave and Bleecker St, staring straight at Marie’s Crisis Cafe, mid-crisis. The symphony of car horns and people shouting acting as the soundtrack to the emotional trainwreck waiting to happen inside.

And when we get resolution from the emotional edging, it’s a big finish with those horns and the repetition of “the world” breaks through so clearly. It’s the entire core of the song. A psychic disconnection of the self, existential questioning is profound with, “I’ll follow the rules and do what I'm told/ Can one be great? Can one be kind?/ When history shows, they're not intertwined/ So what will you choose, your heart or your pride?/ Could you really be so self-satisfied?” It’s him asking that of himself as well as the world. The duality of the micro and macrocosm of these feelings and how it translates individually and universally is so well placed and earned. It shows that we’ve all been there, and if we haven’t yet, we most definitely will.

If Lonesome is the weary, tired, sigh of resignation of loneliness, Basic is the sharp bite in your cheek that kicks in once the dust settles after a long, gruelling road to a quiet goodbye. Link anchors it as the spit of blood from the bite; a sweaty, heady wipe of your mouth right before ripping into the guitars. It’s those moments in the shower when you say to yourself, “Wait a damn minute. I’m not as okay with these things as I thought. You fucked me up. And I actually do have something to say about it.” I know that feeling and progression of emotions well. All too well (Syn’s version), if you ask me. It’s exhausting because you’re no longer fighting with that person (or hey, maybe you are)-- but actually yourself. It’s a jump emotionally, but it’s real. It’s honest. Potion doesn’t just cool the burn — it reminds you the light’s still on, even if it’s dim, just before getting thrown back in the ring with Delete Ya and Egg.

The honesty of this record isn’t dressed up — and that’s why it bruises. Yes, bruises not scars. Or should I say, it presses on pre-existing bruises and fading scars just enough to remind you that you felt this way once before too. It’s unapologetic with tone and visceral feelings of longing, loss and existentialism. Joe has mentioned he’s “not a tortured artist” but I’d counter something differently. You can be tortured without being self-indulgent and I think he masters that so beautifully with this record. After all, it takes one (tortured artist) to know one, pal. And that’s not a dig, that’s just a cold, hard fact. And if I’m being really honest, it’s a well earned compliment.