CHARLESTON, S .C.
Awake to Themselves

Charleston, S.C. quintet SUSTO tackle some heavy subjects: alienation, addiction, damnation, religious hypocrisy, redemption, death—the whole deal. The group takes its name from the Spanish word for a kind of spiritual crisis, a psychic rupture, a major-league freakout. “I like exploring darkness and almost forcing people to as well,” says frontman and primary songwriter Justin Osborne.

But SUSTO doesn’t paint only in deep, dark, existential colors—the band has made a habit of offsetting their weighty material by recording lighter, semi-goofy tunes with some religious implications. In 2016, they released a track called “Chillin’ on the Beach with My Best Friend Jesus Christ” and, earlier this year, they were working on a song called “R.I.P. Santa” for the holiday season. “We do these little vignettes between records—they tend to be a little more humorous,” says Osborne.

On their latest record, last year’s very catchy and emotionally hefty & I’m Fine Today, SUSTO pulled off a neat trick, hitting some mellow and smooth Americana-pop buttons and evoking the sound of the Wallflowers or Counting Crows, while telling stories with surprising grit and gutpunches of truth. Osborne was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, and some of his songs have been about coming to terms with his relationship to religion—he’s an atheist now—and the cosmos. His lyrical skills are reminiscent of The Hold Steady or Drive-By Truckers in their willingness to wade in up to the neck in charged matters of significance. Chemically induced mind-alteration has been part of that journey for Osborne.

“Psychedelic drugs have made me who I am,” he says. But he and his bandmates have spent much of the past three years on tour, and he says the psychedelic experience isn’t one that’s conducive to being pent up on the road or in a club. “Sitting in a van for six hours on acid is not the same as riding bikes at the beach.” Still, an evolving perspective is always the goal. “LSD—whenever I was on it—I was thinking in a different way. You come out of those experiences, a little more awake to yourself.” The band plans to pause the ceaseless motion for a spell in the New Year and go into the studio again. Osborne says he’s got about 30 songs already written, awaiting culling, fine-tuning and full-band treatment.