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Apr 07, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mariel Fechik Photography by CJ Harvey and Neil Krug

When the rollout for Joe Keery’s debut album Twenty Twenty began in 2019, one thing became very clear: This was not Joe Keery the actor, whose arc from bully to babysitter on Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things garnered adoring fans the world over. Nor was this Joe Keery the guitarist from Chicago psych-rock band Post Animal, whose debut album had just been released on Polyvinyl the year before. No, this was Djo, Keery but not Keery, mustachioed and disguised in sunglasses and a goofy wig. On the brief, three city tour supporting the album (and until very recently), Keery’s entire band dressed in a matching uniform of disguise, as if daring anyone to ask, “Hey, is that Steve Harrington?”

After talking to him for even a few minutes, it’s easy to understand why he might desire that separation—in real life, Keery is nothing like his on-screen teenage counterpart (or, obviously, anything like the gun-toting alt-right North Dakotan he plays in Fargo’s latest season)—Keery is funny, warm, and a little-self deprecating, known for a goofy sense of humor. When he appeared on my screen for a recent Zoom call to discuss his new album The Crux, he greeted me brightly before immediately apologizing for his stuffy nose, and then again, jokingly, when I said that his melodies have been stuck in my head for weeks.

The disguised approach also spoke to Keery’s well-documented anxieties about social media and parasocial relationships—his sophomore album DECIDE from 2022 put that inner turmoil on display with songs like “Half-Life” and “Fool,” and by that point, he had long stopped using any personal social media accounts outside of the one for his musical alter ego.

“[I was] wanting people to be able to listen to the music with an open mind or with no expectations—and not even to ask that of them, just to sort of trick them into it,” he says in our Zoom chat. But the act was also far less self-serving than he’d have you believe. The thing about Keery is that he’s humble almost to a fault, taking any opportunity to brag about his friends or talk about the great bands that inspired him, and in that context, his past disguises feel more like a quiet way to decenter himself and celebrate those around him.

The idea of performing in the spiritual equivalent of Groucho glasses was not born out of a naive belief that he was actually anonymous. In part, he enjoyed the comedy of it and the open secret that led to comically outsized reactions online when people discovered that the song “End of Beginning” from DECIDE—which went viral on TikTok last year—was sung by Steve Harrington. For anyone who had been following Keery’s music since his days in Post Animal, the song was clearly about having left Chicago and his band behind when he moved to LA—it’s bittersweet and tinged with grief. It’s one that hit me hard personally when I first heard it, having also moved away from Chicago and my band the same month the song was released.

“The thing that I’ve learned about that song,” Keery says, “is that everybody’s got that—like what I thought was really specific just to me, everybody’s got that place they were in when they were 19, 21, 22… It’s those formative years of your life when you’re figuring out who you are, and a lot of that is based on the people that you’re with. It’s really potent when you go back to a place that’s laced with that.”

“Those guys have played such a powerful role in my life, and it’s something that I learned is very important to me and that I will hold dear. I don’t intend on letting it go anywhere because you don’t get too many friends like that in your life,” Keery says of the members of Post Animal, and he means it. He and the group are reuniting on the Back On You tour supporting The Crux.

This emotionally honest, communal spirit is what guides The Crux, which finds Keery dropping the proverbial mask for the first time since he released “Roddy,” his first single as a solo artist. “I feel like [my] whole job is to be as blunt as possible. For me, it’s more cathartic the more honest I am about it,” he says. “For this record, it’s not that the jig was up, but more than ever, I tried to get out of my own way and be really direct with my lyrics, and it felt like continuing with the character and hiding behind that wouldn’t be honest to my full capabilities.”

It’s not that Keery wasn’t emotionally honest on Twenty Twenty or DECIDE; but those were records made largely in isolation, where anxiety and cynicism has room to spiral. When I posit that The Crux feels like the most open and sincere record he’s made, his agreement is immediate. There’s something refreshing about seeing someone who previously limited themselves to a character tear down that wall and choose earnestness over aloofness, I tell him.

“I had this dare for myself that was like…I hadn’t really thought about it like this, but the song ‘Basic Being Basic’ is all about not judging based on what you think is basic; if this is something that you’re into, then it’s cool, and you should do it. It was also a challenge to myself to be able to do that.”

“Basic Being Basic,” the first single from The Crux, is a winking jab of a song, goofy insults floating airily atop a summery dance beat: “Cause you’re basic / Just looking hot and keeping monotone and understated nothingness won’t / Change it.” According to Keery, it’s as much a jab at himself as it is toward anyone else who tries too hard to follow “the moment.”

“I’m a people pleaser. I really care about what people think of me,” Keery says. “And that keeps me up at night sometimes. You know, sometimes it’s not ‘cool’ to say exactly what you mean. Sometimes it’s cool to have a bunch of effects on your voice, and it’s cool if the song is vibey and has all this stuff.”

“But [on The Crux] I was trying to strip all that stuff back and say what I mean and be really honest and earnest about the way that I feel about the people in my life,” he says. “I was like, ‘Hey, here’s a love letter to you guys.’ Each song on this album is like a little memorial for me in my life. I just was feeling super tired of not doing that.”

The Crux also sounds markedly different from DECIDE, which was full of dark tones and spacey synth-pop. In contrast, The Crux is full of light and jangly guitars, even when its lyrics are discussing breakups or self-doubt. It feels cathartic and full of camaraderie in a way that harkens back to both mid-2000s indie pop-rock and The Beatles, and for music fans who grew up on that music like Keery—like me—there will likely be a familiar, homey warmth to the sound of the album.

“It was like a direct response to working so deeply in the box and in the computer—you are enabled, in a way, to kind of go tweaker mode and do anything you want,” Keery says of the process for DECIDE. “I like being creative in that way because you can get to things that are very odd in a quick and, not easy way, but it allows you to just like, drink a bunch of coffee and go crazy.”

But for someone whose musical roots are in a band setting (especially in an environment like Chicago, whose community DIY roots are strong), there was something disappointing about not being able to play the songs from DECIDE in a traditional way. “Some of them I can play, but you can’t just pull out an acoustic guitar and sing some of these songs,” he said. “It had been a while since I had an acoustic guitar with me, so when I was working in Calgary on Fargo, I flew a guitar I had bought in LA up to Calgary and had it the whole time.

“I was maybe trying to get back to my roots, bands that had originally inspired me. I’ve always been a fan of like, righteous rock music,” he says, shaking his fist in the air and breaking into an almost-laugh. “And I don’t think that will ever go away.”

I apologize at one point for repeatedly and excitedly referencing bands or sounds that I notice on his album: Ra Ra Riot? Rooney? Spoon? The Beatles, of course. Is that a little “Dancing In the Moonlight” I hear on the intro to “Lonesome Is a State of Mind”? The Shins!

“I mean, I love The Shins,” he says. “What happened to The Shins?” he asks, sudden bewilderment pitching his voice up. “Where’d they go? My sister loved that album so much and played it a ton…I loved that…I forget what that album was,” he says, before humming the opening melody of “Phantom Limb” from The Shins’ 2007 album Wincing the Night Away.

“That wasn’t top of mind, but man, what a great band,” he says, looking thoughtful. “You know, it’s really funny. I am a fan of all of these bands, but none of these bands were necessarily touchstone references.

“But I do think that there was something about the way that we went about production that maybe is similar to all these bands. They were recording really before the advent of bedroom pop, so they were still recording in a studio, which is how we did this album. That was something that I really wanted to do because we could do it in a more traditional way. That’ll eventually draw you to certain influences.”

“You’re always worried that you’re going to be pegged as like, ‘Oh shit, am I wearing my influences too clearly on my sleeves?’ And, you know, maybe I am a little bit hard on this one,” Keery says, when I ask about the song “Charlie’s Garden” nestled in the The Crux’s B-side. It’s a bit of an outlier, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” meets “Penny Lane,” complete with trumpet, Ringo Starr-style drum fills, and a shockingly convincing Paul McCartney-esque vocal delivery from Keery.

“I almost thought about not including that song, but that song is about my friend Charlie, and like, I love him,” he says emphatically, referring to his friend and Stranger Things costar Charlie Heaton. He closes his eyes and smiles, putting his fingers to his temple: “It’s like a little snapshot for me of my life in Atlanta, and I have a clear picture of him in my head if I close my eyes. That’s the point of music for me, to create these little snapshots.”

“[Releasing the album] is definitely a little scary because I’m sure some people are going to be like, ‘This is cheesy as fuck,’ or, ‘This is so lame,’” he laughs. “And I don’t know, I guess if I were to hear certain things that I sang on this album, or read it on a piece of paper, I’d probably be like, ‘That is cheesy,’” he says in a slightly mocking tone. “But the truth is, I really, actually mean all the things that I said. And sometimes, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, three chords are enough chords.”

This is the crux, then, of The Crux—Keery loves his friends, his family, and music, and he surrounded himself with them to make a record. Across the album, two of Keery’s sisters sing background vocals, the other two joining in on “Back On You,” where he sings their praises: “I’ve known my sisters for a lifetime / I count my lucky stars that I have them / ‘Cause everyday they are a lifeline / An inspiration just to be a better man, that’s the truth.” All the members of Post Animal join the fray as well, and by the end of the album where the repeated refrain is about getting back to your heart, it’s one big chorus.

True to his nature, Keery is generous with The Crux. “I really did make this one for me,” he says. “And I think that in doing so, hopefully people will find something in it for them.” It’s an easy gift to accept: The Crux is the windows-down nighttime drive with your best friends, the springtime dusk in someone’s backyard, the melody that becomes lodged in a memory. And it’s Djo, face clear of sunglasses and ‘70s stache, surrounded by the people who made him, grinning.

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