It’s Saturday night in Boston and as disappointed Red Sox fans are shuffling out of Fenway Park, fans of Royel Otis are lined up across the street at the Citizens House of Blues, waiting for the sold-out show. This Australian indie-rock duo was last in town for Boston Calling back in May.
Comprised of Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic, Royel Otis formed in 2019 after the duo met through mutual friends and exchanged demos they had been working on. Since then, they have released three EPs and their debut album “Pratts & Pain,” released in Feb. 2024, earned the number two spot on the Australian Recording Industry Association charts.
As doors opened at 7 p.m., fans made their way into the venue, accommodating just over 2,000 concertgoers. The crowd is a mix of ages, mostly ranging from 18 to 35. The floor is filled with college-aged kids, while the surrounding bars and balconies are filled by the 21+ crowd.
Finding a spot by the barricade, I’m placed amongst other college students, antsy for the show to begin. While speaking to the fans around me, most said they discovered the band through TikTok after their viral covers of Sophie Ellis-Baxtor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” and The Cranberries’ “Linger.”
With the lights low, the stage glowing blue and a disco ball mounted just above the pit, lead vocalist of Friko, Niko Kapetan, takes the stage. The Chicago-based band, formed of four childhood friends, has been supporting Royel Otis throughout the U.S. leg of the “Glory to Glory” tour.
Kapetan performed a few songs by himself with his guitar before the drummer, Bailey Mizenberger and two other members of the band joined him on stage. The group wowed the crowd with their electrifying performance, but what stood out to me was the bassist. Dancing all over the place, it was he who got the crowd and his bandmates excited.
As their set ended, I escaped the swarms of people and made my way around the venue to the photo pit. Just after 9 p.m., Maddell and Pavlovic came out playing “Heading For The Door,” the fifth song off their latest album.
While the duo continued igniting the excitement from the crowd, I couldn’t help but notice the giant statue of a prawn sitting behind them on stage. Later in the night, I got the chance to ask some fans, who explained that it was a reference to the lyric, “Not that we are shellfish / We just haven’t learnt much” from their hit song “Oysters In My Pocket.” Other fans noted that it is the second-largest prawn statue in the world, with the first residing in Ballina, Australia.
The giant prawn was not the only notable aspect of the night. Groups of friends, couples and solo concertgoers were all up and dancing the entire time. They seemed as if they were not afraid or concerned with anything in the world aside from enjoying themselves in that moment.
Considering this group blew up on TikTok with concerns regarding concert etiquette” have been growing, it might be reasonable to assume this crowd might embody some of those concerns, but I found it to be quite the opposite. For the most part, everyone seemed to be reasonably considerate of the people around them while still having fun.
The energy of the crowd went hand in hand with the energy being brought on stage as the group continued playing from their latest album while revisiting previously released EPs. As if it couldn’t get any more energetic, the title track “Sofa Kings” and “Going Kokomo” off their 2023 EP only got the crowd more excited as they sang along.
It was then followed by their cover of “Murder On The Dancefloor,” which they had originally covered on the Australian radio station Triple J for their weekly segment, “Like A Version” earlier this year. The cover has now amassed nearly 50,000,000 streams on Spotify and 6.4 million views on YouTube.
They continued with “Oysters In My Pocket” before exiting the stage, prompting the audience to cheer for an encore. After a three-minute wait, they returned with the highly anticipated cover of “Linger” by The Cranberries. Closing out with the song “Kool Aid” off the Sofa King EP, fans made their way out of the venue.
After a night of singing and dancing our hearts out, it was only the start of their night as fans lined up for the neighboring bars and clubs. As for Royel Otis, they have the potential to soon be considered indie royalty.
Katherine Varrell can be reached at [email protected]
