Album Review Easy Life - MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE…

Where debut ‘life’s a beach’ offered solace via vocalist Murray Matravers spill-all songwriting, follow-up ‘MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE…’ feels largely like a compilation of leftovers. Both the buoyant ‘BEESWAX’ and Kevin Abstract-featuring ‘DEAR MISS HOLLOWAY’ display a greater understanding of Easy Life’s rightful claim to the indie pop throne, but a miasma of mid-tempo padding elongates an otherwise fun-packed record of pseudo-conversational songwriting. “I’m in denial, but I do it in style,” postulates Murray on ‘BUBBLEWRAP’, the lovable poster boy of the Leicester outfit candidly delivering his free-flowing, conscience-spilling bars over a fuzzy, piano-driven beat, neatly summarising a jaded generation’s collective mantra. Dropping charming rhyming simile after charming rhyming simile is unfortunately not quite enough alone. ‘MEMORY LOSS’ has a funky dynamism while ‘SILVER LININGS’ feels like a perfect summary of Easy Life’s upward trajectory. Missing the urgency and breathy boyishness of ‘life’s a beach’, Easy Life have kicked up their feet on the hypothetical complimentary loungers and are breezing through this release. Injected with a sinking melancholy and mid-tempo rut that weighs down the record, it is perfectly pleasant, but no more. From the phoned-in BENEE feature on the silky ‘OTT’ to the cornball New Orleans piano man hammering on ‘CROCODILE TEARS’, the record prepares for launch but never quite takes off, leaving a little bit more to be desired from the Leicester outlaws.