All Hail Oso Oso: The King of Bridges
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I think I spent the first 25 years of my life not knowing what a bridge is. This is particularly embarrassing because I spent three of those years running a music blog. Obviously I had heard of bridges; I knew vaguely what a chorus and a verse were (the chorus was the repetitive singy part, the verse was the “story” part), but “bridge” was just one step deeper into music theory than I was able to comprehend. Turns out the bridge is the part at the end of the song where the instrumental changed and the artist essentially sings a new verse that doesn’t fit into the format of what came before. Oftentimes the bridge will throw to one more chorus before the end of the song and acts as a way for the artist to keep the track interesting while still giving you that sweet, catchy singalong part one last time.
That’s a pretty elementary explanation, but song structure is something that I didn’t even begin to comprehend until a quarter through my life, so I guess you get what you pay for. I open with this embarrassing anecdote not to flex my middle-school-choir-level of music theory knowledge but to acknowledge that music writing often has a bad tendency to throw around lots of technical terms assuming its reader knows what’s up. Sure, sometimes a concept is widespread enough that an explanation isn’t needed, and other times you can pick things up via context clues, but I’m specifically explaining the idea of a bridge upfront because I’d like to talk about one of the best bridge writers in the game: Oso Oso.
Jade Lilitri has been an entity within the emo music scene for over a decade at this point. Initially making a name for himself as the guitarist and front person for the cult pop-punk act State Lines back in the early 2010s, Jade’s musical ideas quickly spilled out into a solo project by 2014. Initially named osoosooso, this act soon bloomed from a side project to a fully-fledged band with the release of Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters in 2015. Now bearing a subtle yet confusing name change to “Oso Oso” along with more produced sound, Real Stories put Lilitri on the emo map, instantly solidifying himself as a standalone force within the scene with songs like “Track 1, Side A” and “This Must Be My Exit.” This popularity only grew with the release of the yunahon mixtape in 2017 and basking in the glow in 2019, both of which brought increasingly impressive tours and critical acclaim.
Each Oso Oso release features a barebones lineup with Lilitri on vocals, guitars, and bass, while Aaron Masih handles the drums. The touring musicians supporting Oso Oso have always been a rotating cast of friends and collaborators, but the project has primarily been a one-man operation helmed by Jade himself. It’s his band, his ideas, his vision, and his creativity that has led to a project with one of the most uniquely defined sounds in the entirety of the emo scene.
I’ll admit I got to Oso Oso late… like really late. I don’t know why I feel like I need to preface that when discussing my history with a band, but in this case, I feel it provides important context. Sometime in August of 2018, my life was on the verge of massive change. I was about to move from Portland, Oregon, to Detroit, Michigan, for a new job. I was not only moving away from home for the first time in earnest, but I was also moving all the way across the damn country to a state I’d never even set foot in. I was in a weird liminal space and feeling extra sentimental, to say the least. I was experiencing everyday life from a hyper-sentimental vantage point, thinking about how long I was about to go without seeing my family or petting my childhood dog. Every meal I ate and street I walked down felt like a bittersweet reminder that it might be the last time I experienced those things in months or even years. I was living from the perspective of someone whose life was about to be drastically different in a matter of weeks. That’s both a scary and exciting thing to have looming over your head.
Amongst all this weird in-my-feelings self-reflection, I was having an emo renaissance spurred by Gulfer’s Dog Bless and Mom Jeans’ Puppy Love. Those albums brought me back to the mathy emo shit of my high school and college years like Minus The Bear, Modern Baseball, and Into It. Over It. At this point, it was still summer, and the weather was beautiful in Oregon, if not waning just a little bit to the fall chill. I distinctly remember an evening mid-august doing dishes by myself after one of the last homecooked meals I would enjoy that year. I was scrubbing a pot free of the seasonal zest left behind from one of my Mom's world-famous Mexican dishes. Behind me, my MacBook Air sat on our kitchen island, Spotify pouring from the speakers. I had probably just finished listening to an album from some Counter Intuitive band, and Spotify had switched over to the usual auto-generated suspects of mildly-popular emo rock bands.
I shuffled from Mom Jeans to Retirement Party to Pet Symmetry at the whim of the algorithm. I didn’t hate it, but my hands were wet and soapy, so the queue was out of my control. Then it happened; I heard the energetic opening chords of “gb/ol h/nf” and was utterly transfixed.
I’d been listening to emo music for years at that point, yet I had never heard anything quite like this song before. I loved the laid-back, surfy tone, the borderline-stake punk tempo, the crisp emo-flavored guitars, and the even-keel singing. I enjoyed putting the puzzle together of what the song title stood for, and on top of all that, I was absolutely transfixed by the album cover of a dude wearing a shark head costume skateboarding through what looked like a restaurant kitchen or the underside of a music venue. Maybe I was just in a particularly-receptive mood, but the song struck a chord within seconds and made a case for itself over the remainder of its four and a half minute running time.
What really sealed the deal came midway through the song at two minutes and 33 seconds, where the instrumental bottoms out to just guitar for a moment as Jade repeats, “I love it, yes I do… oh no, I think I love them more.” Eventually, the bass and drums join in, gradually picking up the pace as the lyrics continue, “and I love you yes I do… uh no, no I’m not really sure.” Just as Jake croons the word ‘sure’ in about as high as his voice ever goes, the instrumental drops out, making way for a jagged barrage of emo instrumentation that’s synchronized but just a little too off-tempo to dance to. As this unpredictable section of the song jostles the listener around, it breaks just long enough for Jade to get out one more half-thought as he trails off with “don’t know…” before throwing back to the whiplash-inducing riffage.
This seemed like a fitting (if not slightly jarring) way to end the song, but much to my surprise, the track was only halfway over. After this skillful bout of jazzy emo instrumentation, the instrumental clears out once again, this time letting everything breathe and giving enough space for Jade to appear with his guitar and continue the story. Almost as if a cable was knocked loose during a violent mosh, the song continues with Jade strumming what sounds to be an unplugged electric guitar. As he brushes his pick over the chords, he sings,
Well, that rain cloud in your head
(it’s still raining)
The monkey on your back
(he’s still hanging)
And I’m stuck here, a waste, complaining to you
(always complaining)
Then, as if by some miracle, the power has been restored, the bass and drums re-emerge, joining the guitar in this new laid-back instrumental. Here’s where the song’s title is revealed as Jade sings, “so goodbye old love, hello new friend. This is where it ends and then begins again.” Soon the track incorrigibly picks back up steam once again, expending all its remaining energy on a bouncy outro and cleanly-executed guitar solo.
This mid-song fake out was a beautiful surprise, and unlike anything I was listening to at the time, especially in the emo space. I discovered “gb/ol h/nf” was a single with an accompanying song titled “subside,” which I immediately queued up, and I quickly grew just as infatuated with. While it was slightly less energetic and didn’t have a crazy fake-out ending, “subside” felt like a more downtrodden follow-up to its accompanying A-side. It was the emotional chaser to the youthful energy that preceded it. It was the mid-set catch-your-breath-moment before the band launched into another banger. The crazy part was, as stylistically different as these two tracks were, “subside” still bore a precise emo instrumental and mesmerizing melody wrapped inside of its deeply-feeling chorus. Where had Oso Oso been all my life?
I spent the remainder of that year and the next slowly absorbing the rest of the band’s oeuvre, focusing primarily on the yunahon mixtape with a chaser of gb/ol h/nf / subside for good measure. This eventually spread to the band’s debut and culminated in fully appreciating the rollout of basking in the glow, which worked its way up to #4 on my 2019 Album of the Year list. What I discovered over the course of my yearlong flirtation with Oso Oso’s impeccable discography is that Jade Lilitri has a knack for writing incredible, engaging, and creative bridges.
So often, bridges can feel like an extra idea thrown in because it didn’t fit anywhere else on the album or, worse, a stopgap meant to lazily withhold one more chorus from you for just a few moments longer. In Oso Oso songs, the bridges feel necessary and reveal an additional layer of consideration to the core musical idea. The songs themselves are already catchy and engaging enough on their own, but the bridges that Jade writes often feel like an essential idea that’s both self-contained and fits within the world of the song.
Oso Oso songs are like ice cream. Sure, ice cream on its own is good, but you throw a great bridge in there, and it’s like getting a fully-loaded ice cream cone with all the fixings. It’s the difference between a good snack and a great dessert. The songs would work without them, but Jade’s bridges act as a cherry on top containing their own ideas, phrases, and instrumentals that all get stuck in your head just as much as the “core” song itself. It’s like a song on top of a fucking song.
Outside of “gb/ol h/nf,” the next time I took note of Jade’s superior bridge writing was with “Great Big Beaches.” Anyone reading this that’s already an Oso Oso fan probably sees that song title and can immediately call to mind both the song’s melody and bridge. That is the other brilliant secret of Lilitri’s songwriting: he often saves the song’s title for the bridge. That means the bridges not only stand on their own, but they’re often the most catchy and memorable part of the song. Once you’ve listened enough, this also means that you spend the entire song waiting for that cathartic, catchy release that comes in the final minutes.
In the case of “Great Big Beaches,” the track begins innocently enough with a handful of reverbed guitar strums, which lead to a cresting instrumental that rises and falls like ocean waves. The song builds and mounts until hitting its stride around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. As the guitars fall into this bouncy sway, multiple different vocal melodies soar over the top until everything clicks into place within the last 30 seconds where Jade busts out the song’s name over one of the most hard-hitting riffs on the album. It’s still bright and sunny and in line with what came before, but at a certain point, you know this instrumental offramp is coming, and you spend the first half of the song just looking forward to its arrival.
These same qualities can also be found in “The Walk,” which starts out with a minimal drum beat that establishes the song’s marching band-like cadence. Things pick up halfway through as the guitars overpower this sensible drum beat. Much like “Great Big Beaches,” things die down right around the three-minute mark before launching into a series of peppy pop-punk power chords. Aside from making me want to single-handledly start a pit every time I hear this energetic burst, it’s also accompanied by a lyrical catharsis as Jade belts, “I misinterpreted everything you saaaaid.” It genuinely feels like there’s something here for everybody, and this last little passage is basically less than a minute.
Going even further back into Oso Oso’s discography, you can find even more examples of this impactful bridge writing. On LP1, you’ve got “Where You’ve Been Hiding” and “Josephine,” and even on Osoosooso there’s “Para ’effin dise, Baby!” In almost all of these instances, Jade reserves the punchiest, most energetic burst of energy for the song’s final minutes. It’s like a long-distance runner who can finally see the endpoint off and knows they don’t have to sustain their power for much longer. Jade lets every instrument loose at once and allows the songs to expend all of their remaining drive in one final push.
Oso Oso already has one of the best, most recognizable discographies in emo/diy/pop-punk/whatever you want to call it. Nobody is making songs that sound like this, blending clean guitar work, catchy choruses, impeccable melodies, and energetic pop-punk instrumentals. You throw bridges into consideration, and it feels totally non-hyperbolic to say that Jade Lilitri is one of the most indispensable songwriters working right now. All I can say is thank you, Oso Oso, for teaching me not just what a bridge is but what a great bridge can be.
