The architecture of the album with Djo (Joe Keery live at NYU)

September 15, 2025·55 min·5 clips

Joe Keery breaks down the heartbreaking simplicity behind his lyric about dislocation from his dog.

The album becomes a hotel. By the fourth song, Potion, the room changes. The heavier guitars step back, the acoustic guitar comes forward, and the whole thing feels lighter on its feet. The conversation hears that change as part of the album's design, almost like The Crux has opened a different hallway. Then the guitar talk gets delightfully specific. DADGAD tuning turns into the small hinge for a lot of sounds: Jimmy Page, Irish folk shapes, Black Mountainside, Kashmir, Lindsey Buckingham-style 12-string, and Mellotron all crowd into the same little listening space. Joe does not make it sound grand or mysterious. He talks about getting hooked on Travis picking, alternate tunings, moving around the neck, and taking capos on and off until something clicked. Canada matters here, oddly enough. Joe describes being bored, without friends, and playing guitar because there was time to fill. That boredom turns useful. Potion and Fly came out of the same stretch of searching, where small finger moves started opening up bigger song ideas. The best part is how physical the analysis stays. You can feel the strings being retuned, the drums easing off, and the acoustic guitar becoming the machine that runs the track. Then Joe flips the image somewhere more childlike: Sesame Street, Harry Nilsson, Ed Emberley drawings. That twist keeps the craft from feeling like homework. The song sounds carefully built, but also playful, visual, and cleanly alive. The live room helps too. Quick questions, fast confirmations, little music-nerd catches. By the end, Potion feels less like a detour and more like the strange bright room The Crux needed.

As heard by us

A dense but rewarding album talk that treats The Crux as a record of careful shifts.

Switched on Pop frames Djo's The Crux as a record defined by movement, and it does a good job of staying with that idea. The jump from heavier guitars into the acoustic, lightly percussive shape of "Potion" feels coherent, especially when the hosts stay close to the small…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want Joe unpacking The Crux like a roomful of clues.

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