Twenty Twenty

Djo — Joe Keery's synth-pop alter ego — trades the viral shimmer of "End of Beginning" for something more textured and searching here. "Twenty Twenty" builds on layered analog synths, a warm bed of arpeggios and tape-saturated drums that nod to late-'70s and early-'80s art-pop without slipping into pure pastiche. His vocal is close-mic'd and slightly veiled, processed into the mix rather than sitting on top of it, which gives the whole thing a diaristic, half-remembered quality. The emotional landscape is retrospective — the title's double meaning (perfect hindsight, and the year the world stopped) hangs over a lyric preoccupied with clarity that arrives too late, with seeing yourself plainly after the fact. There's a bittersweet drift to it, melancholy wrapped in danceable warmth, the Djo signature. Culturally he sits in the current wave of actor-musicians earning genuine credibility, and his production instincts — psychedelic, meticulous, a little melancholic — set him apart from the retro crowd. Best played on headphones during a long walk at dusk, when you're turning over an old version of yourself and trying to forgive them for what they couldn't yet see.