Oso Oso's mode is built around finding the perfect view, feeling sand between your toes and watching the sun rise. You know the motto: Life is beautiful. Although frontman Jade Lilitri draws his sound from the bad and often misogynistic heritage of Long Island emo, his lyrics are more stag than war, looking at the universe through the eyes of a doe. In his hometown of Long Beach, New York, it's easy to find the Bible in the everyday—the vastness of the Atlantic is never more than a mile away, and the city was devastated by Hurricane Sandy just a decade ago. The sea is a motif that runs through his work and on Oso Oso's fourth record, Sore thumb, is a fateful mission: “Captain of my own Titanic,” he sings on opener “Computer Exploder,” caught in a fatal battle against his worst impulses. If emo had its Herman Melville, Lilitri might be the strongest contender.
Sore thumb it wasn't meant to be the band's next record — or at least, not exactly in this form. In early 2021, Lilitri and Oso Oso guitarist Tavish Maloney spent a month with longtime collaborator Billy Mannino in his studio, writing and recording early ideas for a follow-up to 2019's leap into anthemic pop. Basking in the Glow. But the would-be demos took on new weight soon after their completion when, less than a month later, Maloney died suddenly. These dozen songs, written between LSD trips and video games, became an unwitting memorial for a late partner, cousin and best friend. Aside from the mastering and mixing, the album has been virtually untouched since they recorded it. It's a document of abstract experiments and stony afternoons, stranger than any Oso Oso record while still pulsating with his quest for bliss.
The album's intimate origins – days spent in the studio during a pandemic winter – are reflected in its exploratory flourishes and wild experiments. For the first time on an Oso Oso record, there's pounding piano, whistling melodies, warm synths. It's telling that one of the last things Lilitri shared before the album was a cover of “I'm Only Sleeping” by the Beatles. Sore thumb it's the closest thing to his Revolver, a drug-fueled, freewheeling extension of their sound: slanted Britpop (“Pensacola”), jangling folk (“Because I Want To”) and reggae accented with a vibraslap thrown in for good measure (“Father Tracy”). There are still unwieldy falsettos, jittery guitar solos and choruses that crash like tidal waves – Oso Oso never sacrifices a perfect pop hook for the sake of eccentricity – but now they're built with backing percussion, pitch-shifting vocals and backmasking as a chord counterbalance. their power in high sugar.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/oso-oso-sore-thumb/
