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.
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