Hard Life - onion

‘onion’, the new album from Hard Life, is a raw, unvarnished snapshot of frontman Murray Matravers’ life in disarray, built from the rubble of legal battles, fractured relationships and bruised hope. From the moment opener ‘tears’ spills out – detailing the band’s very public courtroom struggles – it’s clear this is the sound of a songwriter holding nothing back.

‘OGRE’ follows with sad, strange honesty, its quickfire confessional delivery masking the bleak heart of a relationship collapse. Even ‘crickets!!!!’, which hints at something more playful, eventually descends into introspective gloom ("I’m driving into traffic just so I can sit a minute crying"), capturing the album’s uneasy dance between fun and crushing melancholy.

It often feels like Murray noodling away on his own, grief and confusion laid bare across a tangle of glitchy beats, woozy synths and uneasy melodies. But there’s method in the madness. From the precisely ordered track names – ‘OCTOpus’ sits as track eight, ‘tele9raph hill’ at nine, for example – to the strong narrative arc that runs through the record, ‘onion’ is deeply considered, even as it radiates the chaos of personal implosion.