When I interviewed oso oso frontman Jade Lilitri last December, life till bones was merely a skeleton like the ones on the album’s cover. He was prepared to enter the studio the following month with one main goal in mind: make a back-to-basics record. Some of the songs being brought into these sessions were older than the band’s 2019 record Basking in the Glow, but the plan was not to bring in something bare and build on it until fully dressed and accessorized, but to instead record pure embodiments of these songs absent of any bells and whistles.
The band’s spring tour co-headlining with Spanish Love Songs (a crowd that had me surrounded by a litany of self-proclaimed “elder emos”) saw the band test out lead single “all of my love,” and Lilitri continued his mastery of nonchalant vulnerability. The song gets to the point, and the song gets moving to what’s next while still leaving a lasting impression: “I can’t give you all of my love / All of my life” he admits about a relationship that’s run its course. It’s not sugar coated and Lilitri doesn’t defend himself, but if there’s something that he and his bandmates have historically done well, it’s turning disappointment into a catchy hook.
“all of my love” and the preceding “the country club” call back to the sunny disposition of early 2010s indie rock heavy hitters like Two Door Cinema Club and Phoenix, as Lilitri admits and reckons with his shortcomings. “I’ve got a lot to apologize for,” he sings alongside bright electric guitar and perfectly mixed syncopated hi-hat. Put this song next to “Undercover Martyn” in your queue and you’re bound for a good time. Lilitri is at his most confident vocally on this record, and “the country club” sees him busting through the gates swinging. oso oso’s “Phoenix/Paramore song” of the album, “that’s what time does,” continues those decade-old influences by delivering content reflections on the anticlimactic end of a relationship; rich vocal harmonies deliver the song’s soaring chorus: “And you let out this little sigh / Both of us lined up eye to eye / I’m laying across the floor from you / You said, ‘I need a little more from you’.”
Sole acoustic track “seesaw” became an immediate highlight, an homage to the late Tavish Maloney—Lilitri’s cousin and the band’s guitarist until his passing in 2021. Taking a lo-fi home recording approach akin to “one sick plan” from basking in the glow, Lilitri likens his relationship with Maloney to that of a seesaw—accompanied by a drapery of acoustic guitar and occasional piano flourishes. The song details the ways in which the two men balanced each other out, how Lilitri’s survivor’s guilt brought on by the loss: “I stayed too late and you left too young,” he bemoans. An emotional break from the record’s overarching nonchalance, Lilitri’s songwriting is intimate, fractured and grateful. “He captured every single color and hue,” he sings, as if he’s delivering a eulogy.
The emotional tension of life till bones finds a release in its final stretch, as “application” showcases Lilitri performing with a reinvigorated desire to get his shit together for a new love interest. “I want you so bad,” he repeats in the song’s steady, hopeful chorus. The following track, “Skippy,” starts with a bait-and-switch—an intro reminiscent of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”—before doubling in tempo in a delivery of tight power pop music that’s rewarding both in its build-up and in its dance-party conclusion to the record’s broader sonic narrative. “I like that when I’m with you I make the good choice instead” is sung by Lilitri atop triumphant vocal harmonies and driving guitars that sound like something off a Beths record. In oso oso’s world, hitting rock bottom is necessary before coming out on top, and that lesson is told with grace and poise on life till bones. Lilitri comes across as a humble, self-aware and favorable protagonist—and that’s only bolstered by just how fun and engaging the music is in the vacuum of the album.
Videos of Lilitri walking around the studio and smoking weed teased the commencement of the record’s creation, which speaks to the intrinsic nature of his creative chemistry with producer Billy Mannino, who has worked on every oso oso project. It’s just a couple of chillers making a damn good rock record. “Billy’s studio is the best because I walk around like a stoned toddler talking about random stuff and then can just walk up to an instrument or microphone and go ‘can we get this real quick?’ and he goes ‘yea what song?’ and then we rock,” Lilitri detailed in a recent tweet. In the age of streaming, succinctness is slowly becoming a lost art, and life till bones proves that a complete and rewarding story can be told without wasting anyone’s time.
