Easy Life, Junk Food
Island Records
Easy Life are grabbing 2020 by the horns – just a week in, and they’ve set us up for a good year if Junk Food is anything to go by. Clocking in at just 19 minutes, the shortness of the album is a blessing and a curse – a curse because it’s not long enough, but a blessing because we can listen to it through over and over again to totally digest every bit of brilliance that’s in it.
Frontman Murray Matravers delivery is understated and laid-back; each song could be a conversation, and the lowkey vocals in the verses mean that choruses like Sangria’s “I fucking hate it when you leave” and LS6’s “I’m out on a whim, up with the cirrus clouds” soar in a gorgeously punctuating way. Easy Life keep it real with their subject matter; they’re a storytelling band, scattering metaphor amongst the naturalistic, chatty lyricism, that makes closer Spiders so heart-rending and lead single Earth so entertaining yet poignant.
Easy Life’s musical niche takes the down-to-earthness of the lyrics and tosses it into the atmosphere. Floaty, wavy synth lines, guitars that could come straight off the lo-fi likes of dandelion hands or salvia palth, shimmering, lilting melody lines under distorted vocal samples – just a taste of the soundscape the Leicester gang have woven together. They really are the masters of creating a vibe, and Junk Food is just further proof.
Junk Food is out now via Island Records.
