As solid as SUSTO’s 2021 album Time in the Sun was, their latest – My Entire Life – is in an entirely different league lyrically, musically, and emotionally. The road to get here was hardly easy.
Frontman Justin Osborne was dealing with the crumbling of his marriage, trying to rebuild his band after the pandemic and watching family members struggle with addiction and mental illness. Channeling that pain, the result is easily SUSTO’s most powerful record in their decade long career, a watermark by which all their future records will likely be judged.
On “Tina,” for example, he sings about his recently widowed mother dealing with two kids who are homeless and addicted to amphetamines. The raw emotion in his voice, paired with the honesty in the lyrics, is enough to keep you holding your breath through the entire three-minute song. And that is far from being an outlier. Throughout, the album is brimming with emotions that cover the spectrum vacillating between hurt and despair and the optimism associated with new love. Musically, it’s also boasts some of the most beautiful songs the band has ever committed to tape; “Hyperbolic Jesus,” “Rooster” and “Break Free, Rolling Stone” are all remarkably brilliant songs that fans will likely keep coming back to for years.
While much of the album was recorded in Charleston, SC, Asheville, NC, and Athens, GA, the band headed to the Mexican town of Tepoztlan where they turned an Airbnb into a remote recording studio. The album is a compelling mix of Americana, folk and Indie Pop with some inspiring influences of psychedelia added in as well.
“SUSTO’s narrative has always been confessional, and songwriting is my way of trying to make sense of the chaos—good and bad—around me,” said Osborne about the album. “This record is my story of navigating a bunch of chaos but finding ways to carry on and manifest my own happiness…the last few years were a challenge, but I look back and see that I made it through, a better, truer, and more realized version of myself.”
It’s hard to argue with the results. As emotionally charged as it can be at times, My Entire Life marks both the most important album the band has created so far and the most satisfying as well.
