Label: Island
Released: 7th October 2022
They’ve been through the feverish a-sound-a-minute stage, and they’ve cemented a steadily-growing career with the hazy tones of debut album ‘life’s a beach’. Easy Life are now more than capable of diving deep into a production style and returning to the surface with something new; something sophisticated that adds a real richness to their discography. As such, their next steps take shape across the sprawling ‘Maybe In Another Life’.
On first listen, the tones of this second record might seem disjointed. With bright and retro artwork, it seems that the five-piece have set about to manufacture a new reality to escape the isolation it was written in – and you’d be right. However, just like how ‘life’s a beach’’s seaside escapade was unable to avoid the burdensome woes of British life, this fresh world is one still troubled by the regrets of its creator.
Easy Life seem to revel in subverting expectations when introducing the album with lead single ‘Beeswax’, a moody dismissal of intrusive curiosity that contrasts much of the forced introspection expressed elsewhere on the record. The tracklist opener ‘Growing Pains’ is a far more accurate introduction to ‘Maybe In Another Life’, detailing how it feels to try to find your place in the world and the anxiety of doubting whether things are working out as originally intended.
An album of what ifs, the Kevin Abstract-approved ‘Dear Miss Holloway’ birthed the cohesive concept of exploring all life’s maybes. In the mind of songwriter and singer Murray Matravers, this was always bound to become a melancholic experience plagued with self-doubt, but the process of penning that down expunged some worries and allowed him to move on with a clearer mind. Fortunately, the listening experience succeeds in sharing a similar gift with fans.
There are still party songs present but that glee is only one aspect of a muddier project – if the last full-length was horizontal, consistently flowing but easy to see through, this one is less flat or transparent. Ditching an over-reliance of synths for the warm embrace of natural instrumentation, ‘Maybe In Another Life’ gradually reveals a luxurious and uplifting listen that will be more than sufficient to keep Easy Life on the radar.
