Oso Oso albums have promised elaborate narratives about chimeric monsters, a travelog of romantic intrigue in a fictional town, great big beaches, and great big blunts. But on Life Till Bones, Jade Lilitri is no longer fleeing from his own reality. “Other people’s stories got me feeling bored,” he sings at the close of his fifth LP. If there was a change in sound to match the change in sentiment, Life Till Bones might be industrial noise or pluggnb instead of the toothsome emo pop that Oso Oso has been perfecting for the better part of a decade. Still, the commitment to a, gasp, darker, more introspective Oso Oso album in mood alone is enough to make Life Till Bones feel like a welcome expansion of the band’s core aesthetic rather than a mere embellishment.
Long-time Oso Oso producer Billy Mannino recently proclaimed the VVS brilliance of Jimmy Eat World’s 2004 record Futures as the standard for “big punchy rock records.” Lest anyone think he was tipping his hand, Life Till Bones is a small, punchy rock record, a string of pearly, polished gems. It’s as if Mannino and Lilitri gave themselves a “clarity, not Clarity” mandate to do away with just about everything that doesn’t provide an immediate payoff: overdubs, reverb, synth washes, or anything as blasé as “a second verse” or “bridge.” A single digital handclap during the chorus of “All of My Love” is about as indulgent as things get here. But having the chorus take up over half the song? That’s economical writing.
If Life Till Bones lacks something as explosive as “The View” or “Reindeer Games” or “Computer Exploder” within its 29 minutes, Lilitri makes up for it by reinventing himself as a master of efficiency. The experimentation here takes place on a micro level, song structures inverted and streamlined for maximum impact, genre interludes reduced to teasers. The brisk basslines of “The Country Club” and “Skippy” alone reveal Lilitri’s mindset for a “dancier” Oso Oso album, one that means a slight repositioning along the spectrum between The O.C. and Meet Me in the Bathroom, where the jeans are tight and the rhythm section’s even tighter. “That’s What Time Does” pushes that timeline forward, imagining a teenaged Lilitri trying to find middle ground between the Paramore and Phoenix singles on his iPod Nano; the first nü-yacht rock Oso Oso single ends up smooth enough for Rob Thomas’ approval.
Lilitri’s sleight of hand is most pronounced on the cheeky album cover, its Guitar Hero skeleton crew at odds with Life Till Bones’ earnest take on mortality. Sore Thumb was transformed by the passing of Lilitri’s cousin and collaborator Tavish Maloney at the age of 24, but only after the fact; the rough edges and demo-like fidelity were kept nearly intact as a tribute to familial joy that Maloney brought to its creation. The latter still weighs heavily on Lilitri: “That was my brother almost a quarter century/And I failed him when I said, ‘Hold on to me,’” he sighs over a scratchy, lo-fi acoustic strum that has become the requisite mid-album break on Oso Oso albums. But rather than respite, “Seesaw” deepens plainly worded pleas for connection that otherwise might have whizzed by on their breezy melodies: “Feel like I stayed too late and you left too young,” “You’d think there's nothing I fear/But now I fear more of the same,” “I got to hit you up and remember you’re not there.”
As much as it reshapes the first half of the album, “Seesaw” is a terminus point of mourning. “I don’t care what disaster’s next around the bend,” Liltiri beams on the snappy, Strokes-y “Application,” starting a run of unabashed love songs written by someone who doesn’t immediately trust what love songs have to say but is at least willing to listen. “I can’t fall in love if it’s not with you,” he admits—and as it turns out, other people’s stories have Lilitri feeling bored because “they’re not like yours.”
Like the nine songs before it, “Other People’s Stories” meets its modest ambitions: to satisfy, rather than to surprise. It can leave Life Till Bones feeling not quite commensurate with what it actually is: one of the most celebrated songwriters of his scene making a filler-free record entirely about love and death. Taking the long view, signing to a Big Emo Label and working with a Big Emo Producer on Basking in the Glow makes it an outlier for an artist who prefers to shrink from the spotlight. Lilitri nonchalantly revealed the cover, title, and release date of Life Till Bones the day it got mastered; I’d use the word “leaked,” except Oso Oso are back where they were in early 2017, working with Mannino and self-releasing their album as free agents. While Tavish Maloney shapes the content of Life Till Bones, he also feels present in its context, a purge of distraction and clutter that only comes when people confront what truly matters in their life.
