easy life release their long-awaited debut album ‘life’s a beach’
The Leicester band offer a heartfelt contemplation on relationships in the contemporary world and how overwhelming our own thoughts can sometimes be
★★★★☆
Photo: Ben Bentley
Four years since the release of their debut single pockets in 2017, Easy Life have released their much-anticipated debut album life’s a beach; a bold, playful, and endearing instalment to their discography.
life’s a beach is a sentimental and energetic album, underscored always by a playful personality that has become a defining characteristic of easy life’s music. The Leicester band offer a heartfelt contemplation on relationships in the contemporary world and how overwhelming our own thoughts can sometimes be.
ocean view is a standout track on the album; a continuation of the sunny, sentimentalities in sangria, their 2019 single (it has quickly made its way to the top of my Spotify On Repeat) featuring the Brit Award-winning Arlo Parks.
Lead singer Murray Matravers mulls over a relationship, his lyrics are a mixture of romantic images and playful quips that consider how easy it is to remember a relationship through rose-tinted glasses, seemingly forgetting the downfalls and the frictions. However, he also offers a poignant message on viewing matters from an outside perspective and how easy it is to conjure up a falsehood; an important notion to tackle in the age of social media.
The tranquillity of ocean view comes to an abrupt ending as easy life launch into skeletons; an up-tempo, pop-like track about the excitement and complexities of new relationships. In contrast to ocean view, there is a euphoric carelessness, about daring to jump into something new and running the risk of turning into somebody’s ex-something.
This blissful energy continues through the track daydreams, centred around a high-pitched, sped-up sample of the chorus of Aretha Franklin’s Daydreaming. The track was first released as a single last year and was the first (and very promising) insight into what could be expected from easy life’s debut album. Again, easy life tackles the complications of relationships in the contemporary world, the romantic notions of Aretha Franklin’s lyrics contrasting with the problems of now heavily digitised relationships.
Photo: Easy Life
In living strange, compliments, nightmares and homesickness, Matravers tackles mental health and existing in the present-day world. There is a clear message that the way we live now is having a huge toll on feelings towards the self and relationships with others. This is conveyed strongly through lyrics, descriptions of emptiness like “Nothing / Even if there’s nothing wrong” and reflections such as “We haven’t called each other for days / And we’re never on the same wavelength”. This second half of life’s a beach stresses the difficulty of navigating relationships and preserving mental health in a world where everything is increasingly digitised and publicised.
music to walk home to is a bold ending to easy life’s album after a hazy, dream-like half an hour. It is quite likely their most experimental offering on the album, an intoxicated stream of consciousness poem over a brassy ensemble, that feels like a homage to The Streets.
easy life have offered their listeners a thought-provoking album that is simultaneously fun, energetic, and incredibly easy to fall in love with.
