Album review: easy life’s MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… feels mediocre and muddled

A second album is never easy. Hot off the back of the sun-soaked success of their debut record Life’s a Beach, easy life have crafted a sophomore album which ditches the small-scale playfulness of their earlier work, instead opting for dizzying expansiveness (in both the musical and thematic sense).

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE…’s influences are richly varied – it sees easy life incorporating the disparate sensibilities of Motown, prog rock, trip hop, and Latin into their signature indie rock, jazz, and hip hop fusion. But do the group manage to pull off this eclectic project successfully? Well, kind of.

Having established themselves with a plethora of concise, infectious ‘mixtape’ EPs, as well as the aforementioned LP Life’s a Beach, it should come as no surprise that there are undoubtedly moments of immense strength on MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… In and amongst the heady mix of textures, genres and themes, we find some of easy life’s best songs to date.

‘DEAR MISS HOLLOWAY’ is a rousing romp of a single. It is crisp, catchy and clever: a perfect cocktail-sipping-soundtrack. Here we see singer/lyricist/keyboardist Murray Matravers at perhaps his lyrical finest, overlaying the band’s masterful hip-hop beats with subtly bittersweet musings on unrequited love.

Kevin Abstract, one of the album’s many features, shares the spotlight with Murray to deliver an effervescently satisfying verse. Abstract is a more-than-welcome addition to the record, helping to consolidate easy life’s commendable desire to continuously collaborate and break new musical ground (though let’s just forget his performance with the band at this year’s Glastonbury festival – sorry, Kevin).

‘OTT’ is another stand-out track, boasting hypnotic keyboard washes and left-field imagery (“you’ve got a face like a slapped fish”). It’s a simple song, but works wonders as a rare moment of frustrated sobriety – we can’t help but empathise with the jaded singer trapped in the middle of a party of intoxicated friends.

Guest feature BENEE contributes to the song with a flowing, dreamy vocal – almost liquid-like in quality. Yet the song’s duet admittedly fails to reach the ecstatic heights of Murray & Arlo Parks‘ drunken chemistry on classic single ‘Sangria’, but certainly forges its own unique identity and appeal.

However, the true crowning glory of MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… comes in the form of its fifth track, ‘BUBBLEWRAP’. On first listen, the song stood out to me like a rare sliver of sunlight breaking through the North-West rain. Soapy, sensual, soulful – easy life somehow manages to inject their laid-back sound with the warmth of Marvin Gaye circa ’71… a bonafide treat for lovers and stoners alike.

When Murray drawls his tongue-in-cheek invitation of “so meet me in the sandpit,” how could you say no? But, however great these aforementioned tracks may be, unfortunately they’re just not quite enough to save the album from falling into the sorry sands of mediocrity, (or, to use the technical term – meh).

The album’s main flaw is arguably its lack of conceptual conciseness. Life’s a Beach, albeit breezy, had a clear theme throughout. It was a debut record all about scratching beneath the surface – an idyllic summer holiday gradually becoming undercut with scepticism, anxiety, and lethargy (so, essentially, your average day trip to Skegness). It had a satisfying vision which hooked its listeners and used its songs to implicitly explore the journey of learning to accept that things aren’t always going to be perfect. By the end of the record, Murray seemed to have come to terms with himself and the world around him. Simple, short, effective.

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE…, whilst undeniably exploring interesting themes such as adulthood, toxic relationships and the inevitability of time, feels muddled. Stretched out over a runtime close to an hour long, the listener is left with a record thematically confused, and ultimately, just a bit sluggish.

The second side of the record in particular drags – songs such as ‘ANTIFREEZE’ or ‘CROCODILE TEARS’ feel so uninspiring that the record becomes a slog to get through. It’s as if one were attempting to wade through a vat of treacle. The band’s respectable attempt at expansiveness feels forced in comparison to the intimate world of their debut record.

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… attempts to achieve its desire to be more conceptual and transcendent through its use of recurring musical motifs, and a tendency to blur the lines between where songs start and end. This is a welcome differentiation from previous works, but fans of the group are bound to be polarised on whether this works for them or not.

At best, the liquidity of the track listing is relatively hypnotic (especially if you just want to space out to some easy-listening music), but at worst, it comes off as five white guys from Leicester trying their hardest to make a Tyler The Creator record.

Overall, the effect is frustratingly pretentious, as if the group feel as though their album is more sophisticated than it is – perhaps made even worse by the group’s newfound swagger-turned-arrogance. easy life lacks the violent, visceral quality of hip hop stars such as Tyler The Creator to back up their musical ambitions, leaving them with a record sounding like a withered Flower Boy.

On another crucial note, the production ranges from pitch-perfect to strangely muddy – lead single ‘BEESWAX’ (easily the most underwhelming single the band has ever put their name to) is a prime example of the latter, sporting a dirge-like quality that somehow drowns out any melodic or lyrical appeal. It’s an album you’ll find yourself skipping tracks… a lot.

From a musical, lyrical and production perspective, there are some great things going on in MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… but a lot of the appeal gets lost in translation. Bustling, but bloated. Ambitious, but derivative. In spite of a handful of career highlights, easy life’s second studio album misses the mark.

2/5.

MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… was released on October 7. You can buy it here or stream it below.