{"id":35,"date":"2022-03-28T09:20:58","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T13:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/?p=35"},"modified":"2022-04-04T12:08:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T16:08:56","slug":"sore-thumb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/sore-thumb\/","title":{"rendered":"Sore Thumb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sore Thumb<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Oso Oso<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2022<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Reviewed by Arielle Gordon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genre: Rock | Label: Triple Crown | Reviewed: March 21, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The liturgy of Oso Oso<\/a> is built from finding the perfect view, feeling sand between your toes, and watching the sun rise. You know the motto: Life Is Good<\/a>. Though frontman Jade Lilitri culls his sound from the malcontent and often misogynistic legacy of Long Island emo, his lyrics fawn more than they fight, staring doe-eyed at the universe. In his native Long Beach, New York, it\u2019s easy to find the Biblical in the everyday\u2014the vastness of the Atlantic is never more than a mile away, and the town was devastated by Hurricane Sandy only a decade ago. The sea is a running motif in his work, and on Oso Oso\u2019s fourth record, Sore Thumb<\/em>, it\u2019s a fatal mission: \u201cCaptain of my own Titanic,\u201d he sings on opener \u201cComputer Exploder,\u201d trapped in a fated battle against his own worst impulses. If emo had its Herman Melville, Lilitri could be the strongest candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sore Thumb<\/em> wasn\u2019t supposed to be the band’s next record\u2014or at least, not quite in this form. In early 2021, Lilitri and Oso Oso guitarist Tavish Maloney spent a month with longtime collaborator Billy Mannino at his studio, writing and recording early ideas for a follow-up to 2019\u2019s leap into anthemic pop, Basking in the Glow<\/a><\/em>. But the would-be demos took on new weight soon after they wrapped when, less than a month later, Maloney suddenly passed away. These dozen songs, written between LSD trips and video games, became an unwitting memorial to a late bandmate, cousin, and best friend. Aside from mastering and mixing, the album has been essentially untouched since they recorded. It\u2019s a document of abstract experiments and stoned afternoons, stranger than any Oso Oso record while still buzzing with his pursuit of bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The album\u2019s intimate origins\u2014days on end spent in the studio during a pandemic winter\u2014are reflected in its exploratory flourishes and madcap experiments. For the first time on an Oso Oso record, there\u2019s plinking piano, whistled melodies, warm synths. It\u2019s telling that one of the last things Lilitri shared before the album was a cover<\/a> of the Beatles\u2019 \u201cI\u2019m Only Sleeping.\u201d Sore Thumb<\/em> is the closest thing to his Revolver<\/em>, a drug-fueled, freewheeling expansion of their sound: slanted Britpop (\u201cPensacola\u201d), jangling folk (\u201cBecause I Want To\u201d), and reggae accented with a vibraslap for good measure (\u201cFather Tracy\u201d). There are still weightless falsettos, restless guitar solos, and refrains that crash like tidal waves\u2014Oso Oso never sacrifices a perfect pop hook for the sake of eccentricity\u2014but they\u2019re now flecked with auxiliary percussion, pitch-shifted vocals, and backmasking as a counterbalance to their power chord sugar high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Oso Oso\u2019s previous efforts shared thematic ties\u2014a fictional town<\/a>, the quest for contentment<\/a>\u2014the closest thing to a unifying concept for Sore Thumb<\/em> is the creation of the album itself. The record is filled with glances behind the music\u2014count-offs, studio banter, a dusty room tone. Oso Oso have often felt like a band created in a lab for the O.C.<\/em> soundtrack, layering Beach Boys harmonies over a perfected emo formula of drop-tuned guitars and stadium-sized choruses. There\u2019s still plenty of that here\u2014\u201cNothing to Do\u201d sounds like a power-pop fever dream\u2014but it\u2019s even more moving to hear the songs that feel rushed, private, incomplete. It\u2019s the same quiet vulnerability that made Basking in the Glow<\/em>\u2019s \u201cOne Sick Plan\u201d such a standout, packing the same emotional weight as their larger than life songs with a more humble setup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing that these songs were likely meant to be reworked before their release makes the record seem contoured by imperfections: The drums, played by Lilitri, are loose, and his voice occasionally cracks on the high notes. But these flaws underscore the band\u2019s irrepressible radiance, as if they can\u2019t help but stumble into hooks and harmonies. Sore Thumb<\/em> is Oso Oso when no one\u2019s watching, still casually sincere and effortlessly earnest. It seems intentional that \u201cAll Love,\u201d a bleary-eyed acoustic soliloquy about an LSD trip, is followed immediately by the muscular wallop of \u201cFly on the Wall\u201d\u2014it\u2019s impossible to separate their adrenaline highs from their soft, stoned introversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oso Oso\u2019s outlook is, generally speaking, bro with a heart of gold, and the more adventurous lyrics flesh out that universe. The winding verses of \u201cPensacola\u201d find our protagonist staring down a gin and soda in Florida\u2019s panhandle. There\u2019s the alcoholic priest on \u201cFather Tracy,\u201d preaching salvation between sips from his flask; there\u2019s the drug dealer on \u201cComputer Exploder,\u201d who Lilitri addresses with the highest possible title of dude-endearment: \u201cMy friend.\u201d Some moments feel like inside jokes, like the jingle-ready exuberance of \u201cNothing Says Love Like Hydration.\u201d Others feel like sparse outlines for love letters\u2014facile rhymes (\u201cbad\u201d, \u201cmad\u201d, \u201cdad\u201d) on \u201dBecause I Want To\u201d might have been reworked in a second round of edits\u2014but even those songs feel inspired in their simplicity. Lilitri doesn\u2019t embellish his words, he builds towering epics in his own vocabulary: \u201cSome days this year, man, they feel never-ender,\u201d he sings on \u201cPensacola,\u201d a moment of bong-hit wisdom that\u2019s hard to shake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A de facto farewell to Maloney, \u201cTav World\u201d is both the goofy vinyl-only closer about smoking weed and a strange kind of hymn. It might seem exaggerated to find transcendence in a record of ostensible demos, but it\u2019s fitting for a band who professes love with a lyric as conversational as \u201cI mean if you want, we can just stay here<\/a>,\u201d from 2017\u2019s The Yunahon Mixtape<\/a><\/em>. Oso Oso venerates friendship, and on Sore Thumb<\/em>, they lighten up and dig deeper, waxing existential about the vital importance of hanging out. As a pseudo-music documentary, this is the story of two unassuming guys in their 20s, hashing out complicated feelings about the world, and it\u2019s both intense and familiar. After all, isn\u2019t one of the lessons of Peter Jackson\u2019s Get Back<\/em> that the Beatles were just homies<\/a>? When Maloney died, Lilitri shared a long and heartfelt tribute to his late creative partner. \u201cI wish I could go back to the times where I felt depressed and lonely and asked you to chill and you drove for hours to chill for days no questions asked,\u201d he wrote. In the church of Oso Oso, chilling with your friends is a sacrament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The liturgy of Oso Oso is built from finding the perfect view, feeling sand between your toes, and watching the sun rise. You know the motto: Life Is Good. Though frontman Jade Lilitri culls his sound from the malcontent and often misogynistic legacy of Long Island emo, his lyrics fawn more than they fight, staring doe-eyed at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benalbright.net\/nmc\/production\/project-three\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}