ALBUM REVIEW: hard life - onion

Three years after their previous album, formerly known cheek band Easy Life shines bright once again in a period of darkness, as lead vocalist Murray Matravers brings Hard Life back into the spotlight with album ‘Onion’. This time around, the album features real tale stories about hardship and their journey, a different approach to the seaside trip we’ve seen in the debut album ‘life’s a beach’ back in 2021.  

The first track ‘tears’ starts things off with a more cheery atmosphere despite topics at hand. The band's signature style is there once again, with indie hip hop tones heard across the beginning. ‘It was easy in my twenties now I got to lawyer up, give me air miles or a fair trial’  perfectly sums up their journey, with a legal battle against travel giant easyJet. Saying this though, the band aren’t afraid of preaching their experiences, and standing up larger as a group. 

Other standout tracks include ‘othello’, ‘yellow bike’ and ‘crickets’ as these also follow the familiar format. ‘yellow bike’ offers more light from a heavier album, with Murray meeting someone on a ‘yellow bike’, having a more fun and upbeat track, with warped stellar vocals of the word ‘yellow’ and faster sounding drums and synth sounds. ‘I wish I could know what it feels like’ could suggest Murray is a pedestrian watching things go by, almost in a limbo phase in between his legal battles and the future of his band.  

A later track in the album ‘p a n o r a m a’ brings the whole idea of the album together. A panorama being a large picture, allows the listener to sit and see the whole scale of what the band has gone through in the last three years. Indie hip hop Hard life wants you to see the journey this has taken, and hopes you stick around to see what is next.