Long Neck – Gardener | Single Review

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What happens when you find the light at the end of the tunnel, but instead of allowing you to see things more clearly, it just ends up hurting your eyes? When hardships that are supposed to make you more resilient end up making you feel even weaker? When you become so comfortable with the familiarity of darkness that it feels like a safer option than heading into the unknown of the morning? On “Gardener,” the latest release from Jersey City DIY project Long Neck, singer/songwriter/Long Neck band founder Lily Mastrodimos draws the listener a portrait of this in-between state; of the slow, often reluctant emergence from a depressive haze. 

It starts with just an acoustic guitar, delicate and melodic, as Mastrodimos begins relaying a series of dark, foreboding dreams she’s been having the past couple of nights. Her voice sways between conversational and storybook– though never too flowery. It almost feels as though she’s just waking up from these dreams, like echoes of these strange visions are still lingering in her mind as she transitions from night to day:

Nothing in the sky
No planes passing by
When the sun emerges
I am baffled by its glare
Gold dust in the air
Mornings are unbearable
I said to no one

The build of this first verse is accompanied by a lush swell of strings, joining the stripped-back instrumental as the sun rises. As backing vocalist R.N. Taylor begins to harmonize with Mastrodimos, we can almost feel the two of them blinking back at the oppressive brightness of those first rays of sunshine. 

“Gardener” is the lead single off of Long Neck’s forthcoming LP Soft Animal, the band’s first record since before the pandemic. It’s a gradual awakening from a hibernation of sorts. As COVID-era precautions are rolled back and the rhetoric of “bouncing back” surrounds us, our current transitional era often feels as though we’re being force-fed normalcy at a rate that’s incongruous with the ongoing crisis. Instead of filling in the gaps that caused the pandemic to wreak the kind of havoc that it did (and continues to do), we’ve been rushed into a sorry approximation of pre-pandemic social conditions that are no longer viable (and, in many circumstances, were never viable to being with). It’s hard to celebrate the pandemic being over when it’s, well, not. Instead of actual relief, we’re forced to continue carrying the burden of a poorly handled public health catastrophe while pretending that it’s all behind us.

On “Gardener,” Mastrodimos grapples with a similar pressure (albeit on a more personal level) to make a quick and easy recovery from past struggles, but can’t do so without processing what she’s been through. She finds herself worn down by the heaviness of her heart rather than strengthened by it, sighing, “everything I’ve felt this week has bent me like a spine/vertebrae unlined/cracking more with time.” Her voice carries an uneasiness and uncertainty. There’s a sense that, though the worst of it may be over, what comes next is still unclear. After all, how can one get “back to normal” when the standard for “normal” has fallen?

The picture of progress we get on “Gardener” isn’t a linear one. We see Mastrodimos give in to the temptation to shut out the world and sleep past noon. Still, her stagnant moments don’t negate her steps forward. The sun is still there even when it’s filtered through her closed curtains. On good days she can “plant gardens with [her] heart,” just don’t expect those flowers to bloom right away.

“Gardener” is out now on all streaming platforms.
Soft Animal releases on June 21st via Plastic Miracles and Specialist Subject, you can pre-order the album on Bandcamp here.

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @grace_roso.

Pool Kids – That's Physics, Baby | Single Review

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I’ve waited years for this moment, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. There’s a new Pool Kids song.

Whew, that felt good.

For those not in the loop, the Florida math rockers first made waves in the emo scene back in 2018 with the release of their debut album, Music To Have Safe Sex To. Spawning from an initial friendship between singer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Goodwyne and drummer Caden Clinton, the duo booked a short studio session that resulted in a collection of nine proggy, freewheeling rock tracks. With no shortage of goofy song titles, iconic riffs, and references to mathy predecessors like TTNG, these songs immediately placed Pool Kids in a continuum of bands walking the line between overwrought emo and tappy, hyper-technical guitarwork. These elements, combined with endearing brushes with pop-punk greats, quickly signaled that this band was destined for something more than the rigid confines of “emo music.”

In the time since their first album, the group has been rounded out by guitarist Andy Anaya (of fellow Florida greats Dikembe and You Blew It!) along with bassist Nicolette Alvarez. Together, they make four of the most talented musicians ever assembled, as anyone who has seen ever Pool Kids live can attest. While fans were treated to a jokey hardcore one-off for April Fools Day 2019 and an Audiotree session that captured the newly solidified lineup’s full prowess, specific weirdos like me have been eagerly waiting to see what this band would do next because, at times, the possibilities truly seemed endless.

Pool Kids even signaled their return in early 2020, going back to give album highlight “$5 Subtweet” a proper video, but whose grand plans haven’t been disrupted since then?

Now that you have the background, you can appreciate when I say that the return of Pool Kids is something I’ve been anticipating for years. Years of wondering what this newly minted lineup would result in, countless nights spent swaddled in my Pool Kids hoodie listening to Safe Sex, and now we have ourselves a new song. I am happy to report that somehow, some-fucking-how, lead single “That's Physics, Baby” lives up to my insurmountable hype. 

In what feels like a nod to the band’s origin, the track begins with the two people who made up the first iteration of Pool Kids; Clinton and Goodwyne. We hear a drum hit and then are immediately dropped into a shreddy guitar lick. Together, these instruments fuse into an innovative groove that could only have come from the minds of this band. Soon, the bass and a second guitar join the fray, rounding out the riff and pushing the song up into the stratosphere. 

In the music video, we watch a listless Goodwyne struggling with her “Untitled Documentary” as bills pile up on the desk of her cozy wood-paneled office. Set in Washington, we see the band as a motley crew of filmmakers staking out the lush Pacific Northwest wilderness in search of some type of small furry creature. Adorned in the finest early-90s attire and armed with cutting-edge home video technology, the band hams it up, making their way through forests, caves, and mountain tops, all in pursuit of the perfect shot. Things get even more Twin Peaks-ey as this narrative alternates between this communal journey of the band and shots of Goodwyne drinking, smashing mirrors, and struggling to assemble her project.

As the video’s tone bounces back and forth from dark to goofy, the lyrics languish in the painful feeling of a failing relationship. The verses hinge upon a persistent theme of losing time, whether it’s lines about clocks moving backward or just a general sense of wasting away. It’s a slow-sinking quicksand of a feeling that any bad relationship inevitably hits. This pain is punctuated by an immensely catchy chorus of “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need / I’m telling you what I / Telling you what I need.” As much as I can’t wait to sing along to this live, within the song’s narrative, these lines are delivered with a sense of frustration, Goodwyne practically pleading for the person on the receiving end to listen to what she is saying.

The video ends with an over-the-top slapstick moment as Caden cracks open a soda, the can exploding in his face and knocking him backward off his chair. As the rest of the band doubles over with laughter, the chorus plays out one last time, and the camera resolves on a close-up of Goodwyne staring off into the distance… Is she catching a glimpse of the animal they’ve been searching for the whole video? Is she experiencing a moment of clarity? As we hear “Telling you what I / Telling you what I need” one final time, the lyrics become re-contextualized. I choose to interpret this shot as a realization that, despite the arduous journey, emotional strife, and financial difficulties, this group of friends, and maybe even that one laugh, was the thing Goodwyne was truly in search of all along.

Pool Kids’ self-titled album is out on Skeletal Lightning 7/22. Pre-order here.

Lou Roy – Pure Chaos | Album Review

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Chaos. It’s one of those words that the internet has seemingly become obsessed with in recent years. It’s a descriptor that’s attributed to a wide range of content, often used similarly (but not analogously) to terms like “cursed” or “unhinged.” Just look at one of the many “Tiktoks That Radiate Chaotic Energy” compilations. It’s become a catch-all for anything we deem unconventional or unexpected– a video of a possum eating Froot Loops, fanart of Sonic smoking weed with Spongebob, a woman duck-facing in a supermarket aisle with a bag of chips balanced on her head. One might wonder if we’ve reached market saturation, if the word has lost its meaning from overuse. After all, if everything is chaotic, then nothing is. 

I’d credit this overexposure in part to the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons alignment charts, which became a stock meme format in the 2010s and have since persisted due to how easily the 3x3 set-up lends itself to various means of categorization. This fairly simple formula situates chaos as the antithesis of lawfulness, yin-and-yang equal opposites with the same relationship to one another as good and evil. If we take chaos to mean the absence or disregard of lawful behavior and expectations, then it makes plenty of sense that Lou Roy would choose to set her debut album Pure Chaos against the backdrop of the seemingly lawless landscape of Las Vegas. Roy has said that the city’s hedonism and larger-than-life tackiness served as the inspiration behind the record. Through the excess and artifice, she manages to tap into an earnestness, metaphorically hot-gluing rhinestones to thoughtfully crafted pop songs. “Scroll” sees her offering a metacommentary on (in)authenticity in the digital age, singing, “I stare at my phone all day/What a nasty way to engage with the world/What an unfair way to play/I could play guitar and sing.” When Roy chooses to go for something bright and flashy, it’s because she’s already got something of substance to draw attention to.

A self-described “anti-genre singer-songwriter who has never done anything weird or wrong,” Lou Roy pulls from a variety of sonic influences, consistently proving her jack-of-all-trades crossover appeal. She breezily floats from the quirky alt-country of vocalists like Faye Webster and Laura Stevenson to the sunny, sardonic pop-rock of Caroline Rose and Pure Chaos co-producer Sarah Tudzin’s band, illuminati hotties. At times she even manages to capture the singalong earworminess of an early-to-mid-2010s Taylor Swift hit. Lead single “Uppercut” in particular occupies an energy not unlike “22,” albeit with a more present awareness of one’s mortality. Not that Roy would let something as silly as the looming eventuality of death get in the way of a good time– the infectious hook laughs in the very face of such surrender: “I swear to you babe we’ll always have our fun/even when we’re grinded into cosmic dust/even when we’re back on earth as pond scum.” 

Whether she’s unabashedly admitting to being a New Year’s Eve Hater or celebrating life’s small joys– a french fry grease-soaked night with friends at a 24-hour diner, waking up with her dog’s “fat face” on her shoulder –Roy hits us with simple truths about the good and the bad that life throws at us, and she takes both in stride. Even in the midst of “plenty of horror stories/plenty of bad days,” her commitment to having fun is never shaken. In the music video for this peppy song-of-the-summer contender, Roy struts unbothered through suburban streets with a small army of puppies leashed to her belt like charms dangling from a charm bracelet. The aforementioned Sarah Tudzin even makes a cameo appearance as an onlooker, perplexed by (and in awe of) Roy’s magnetic energy and unshakeable confidence.

Pure Chaos does not necessarily feel like an album that sets out to be chaotic, but rather a collection of songs about eschewing rigid expectations and embracing the inevitability of chaos. Opener “Valkyrie” serves as a thesis statement for the “fuck it” philosophy that drives the album. The song begins with minimalist percussion from the tapping of a plastic bottle, as Roy explains that she was “forced to breathe on purpose.” From the get-go, she admits her powerlessness to the whims of a random, lawless universe: “Chaos reigns/all is permitted.” The song’s title is a reference to spirits in Norse mythology responsible for guiding fallen soldiers into the afterlife. Roy implores these mythological beings to ride with her into the unknown. Over the moody synths of “Down Since ‘07,” she reaffirms that she’s “down for whatever,” with a casual coolness that dissolves into a moment of quiet vulnerability at the track’s outro. “You’re the only one pulling me out of the corner to dance,” she sings, her voice hushed and breezy. The jagged, jangly percussion and layered harmonies of  “Big Anvil” place it in a sweet spot somewhere between Fiona Apple and HAIM, as Roy asserts her relentless optimism in the face of uncertainty. The future is a source of simultaneous hope and fear for her, as it is for many of us, and Roy clings to aspirations that are small but life-affirming– “One day I’m gonna take that girl to dinner/One day I’ll get the band back together.”

On softer, more introspective ballads like “Bull Ride” and “If We Were Strangers,” Roy’s vocals take center stage, pouring warmly through Golden Hour-era Kacey Musgraves production like sunlight through a window. Both feel like “what-if” songs, with Roy taking on a nostalgic, daydreamy tone as she envisions alternate timelines in which her reality might’ve been different from the one she’s currently living. It’s a subtle but welcome contrast in an album that– especially in its more high-energy tracks –sees Roy radically accepting whatever craziness life sends her way. To get these moments in which she quietly indulges fantasies instead of embracing what’s right in front of her gives the album a refreshing sense of thematic tension. 

The album closes with the grand, sweeping finale of “Dream,” a country ballad fit for the closing credits sequence of a big-budget Western film. It’s not just the references to leopard prints and press-on nails that give the song a gaudy-glam drugstore cowgirl feel– on what is perhaps Roy’s strongest and most compelling vocal performance, she takes her voice to its most show-stopping emotional heights, evoking the sultry charm of Nancy Sinatra and Angel Olsen alike. While most of the album seems to look toward the precariousness of the future, the closer takes on a wistful, reflective tone, with an eye towards the past. As with many other Pure Chaos cuts, “Dream” reminds us that what is beautiful is often also fleeting. The throughline of Roy’s debut album seems to be its message of acceptance– learning to let go of control and enjoy going along for the ride. But as she croons, “dream, baby it’s different in real life,” we see that when it comes to facing what’s real, imagination just might be her greatest superpower.

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @grace_roso.

Nagasaki Swim – The Weight Pt. 2 | Single Review

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I don’t know about you guys, but things have been pretty rough lately. Between fascist infringements on bodily autonomy, frightening escalations of rightwing dog whistles, and apocalyptic concerns for the world at large, it’s been hard for me to do much beyond just continuing to exist. It’s been nearly impossible to motivate myself at work, and even harder to motivate myself here on the blog. On top of all this, I caught COVID back in April, so that was a fun little reminder of my mortality. 

Over the past year, I’ve tried hard to recognize when I need to take a break. Last year I set a goal of publishing at least one article here every week (and I did it!), but recently I’ve been reminding myself that it’s okay to walk away from things for a little bit. That means I don’t force myself to publish anything just for the sake of fresh “content” because nobody wants to read that, and I don’t want to write that. I love sharing the music that I love with the world, but taking the time to sit down and articulate why I adore a piece of music has been a surprisingly hard thing for me recently. 

This has been a long preamble, but hey, ‘words on music and life,’ right? That’s what ya signed up for when you clicked on this. I write all this as a way to flush out my thoughts but also to say that “The Weight Pt. 2” by Nagasaki Swim is the first piece of music I’ve heard in months that’s inspired me to break out a fresh Google Doc and actually start writing. That alone should speak volumes about this song.

The track is a prelude to the Neverlandish folk group’s upcoming sophomore effort Everything Grows and acts as a direct sequel to the mid-album cut from last year’s The Mirror. Back when it was released, I described the band’s debut as “acoustic-led bedroom rock that still manages to sound huge.” Based on what’s on display with “The Weight Pt. 2,” the group has only refined that sound further, expertly walking the line between sweeping and intimate.

“The Weight Pt. 2” slowly wades the listener in with a single acoustic guitar which gradually builds outward with bass, drums, and a gorgeous string section. After establishing this solemn sway, lead singer Jasper Boogaard enters with a nasally delivery that evokes the remorseful twang of recent Greet Death singles.

After a verse about wasting days nudging thoughts around, the instrumental pairs down to just the strings before lifting off into a beautiful, meditative passage. Between the funeral scenes depicted and the anguishing morbid thoughts articulated, the feeling of death hangs heavy over the atmosphere of the song. 

The instrumental dies out again about four minutes in for (what feels like) the end, only for the strings to swell back up and carry us out with a soaring outro that affords the listener just enough time to properly absorb the heft of the topic. 

“The Weight Pt. 2” is not a fun or light-hearted listen, but it is cathartic and freeing in its own way. God knows we’ve all felt that weight of death and dread recently, and sometimes it’s comforting to seek refuge in a song that fully acknowledges the presence of those extremes. It’s not a distraction; it’s an affirmation that things are fucked up and hard. If you’ve been feeling the weight lately, Nagasaki Swim is right there with you. 

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.