Behind the singer’s first world tour in support of Piss In The Wind, an album that entered the Billboard Top 200 at number five and broke chart records across four countries.
He was in Montreal last weekend and created memories for the fans.
Joji does not do things small. The singer and producer, who spent the better part of a decade building one of the more quietly singular careers in alternative pop, has announced a full world tour: the Solaris Tour, organized by Live Nation, spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
The venues are serious. Joji will perform at the Prudential Center in Newark, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, and London’s O2 Arena, among others. These are not rooms for an artist hedging his ambitions. They are rooms for someone who has the numbers to back it up.
Those numbers are hard to argue with. Piss In The Wind, released earlier this year via Palace Creek, debuted at number five on the Billboard Top 200, topped both the Current Alternative Albums and Current Pop Albums charts in the United States, and hit number one on Indie Store Album Sales. Internationally, the record reached number three in Australia, number four in Germany, and number six in the United Kingdom, the latter two representing new personal chart records for Joji, who also posted best-ever chart results in France, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands.
The album itself is twenty-one tracks long and built around a clear creative logic: melancholic compositions paired with raw, atmospheric production, with Joji himself receding behind the work rather than centering it. Collaborations with Giveon, 4batz, Yeat, and Don Toliver give the record breadth without diluting its particular mood. It is an album that sounds like it was made by someone who had figured out what he wanted to say and was no longer interested in explaining himself.
The Solaris Tour will bring those songs to a live audience for the first time. The setlist draws from across his catalog, including “Glimpse of Us” and “Slow Dancing in the Dark,” while incorporating the new material from Piss In The Wind. The production is designed as an immersive experience, built to extend the world of the album beyond the record itself.
Joji has spent years earning this moment. The Solaris Tour is where he collects.
Photos by Louis Alson
