Life can be many things: unpredictable, blessed, strange. But to Easy Life, the five-piece band from Leicester, “Life’s a beach.” That’s the playful and tongue-in-cheek title of their recently launched debut album, which has to be one of the most hyped UK debuts in years. In what feels like a heartbeat, the band have become one of the UK’s most inventive acts. And when you listen to their music – from the soulful and Aretha Franklin-sampling pop of “Daydreaming” to the stirring and personal R&B of “A Message to Myself” – you can’t help but kick back and relax.
The band comes as a full package, and each member has his own influence on the textured production and infectious melodies that comprise each track. But one of the key appeals is the lyricism of lead singer, Murray Matravers. “Murray's definitely the lead lyricist in the group, and his philosophy is that if he's feeling something, then thousands of other people would have felt the same way,” said Easy Life’s Sam Hewitt, while filming a short film with New Era, in which the band showed us around their hometown and revealed some of the fine-tuning that’s going on for their debut album. Through that philosophical ethos, Easy Life have written hits about everything from mental health to climate change. “It's like giving another voice to the battle that is those issues and trying to overcome them,” says Hewitt.
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The band are one of the many faces on the front of New Era’s explosive new music campaign, “The Music Generations”, which celebrates the brand’s historic journey through culture by championing pioneering artists across all genres, from the grime legend Dizzee Rascal to the London rapper AJ Tracey to Easy Life themselves. As part of their collaboration, the band got together with New Era to design their own collection, which includes a colourful bucket hat, a pink 9FORTY and a black velour 9TWENTY, mirroring their vibrant musical style. ”
“It's an absolute honour to collaborate with New Era,” said Matravers, “because it's a classic brand. It's not just something that is cool now. It's going to be cool in 20 years and it was cool 50 years ago too. So, it feels good to be involved with something with so much history and so much authenticity at its core. And crazy that we got to design a hat as well. That's the maddest thing ever.”
“It's an absolute honour to collaborate with New Era,” said Matravers, “because it's a classic brand. It's not just something that is cool now. It's going to be cool in 20 years and it was cool 50 years ago too. So, it feels good to be involved with something with so much history and so much authenticity at its core. And crazy that we got to design a hat as well. That's the maddest thing ever.”
You could say a band like Easy Life – who mix guitar-pop, rap, jazz, and slithers of rock into their sound – could only exist in 2021. Where once bands, and music fans alike, would keep their tastes in neat and tribal genre categories, nowadays, “Everyone likes everything,” says Matravers. He concludes: “The people who listen to our music are very open. They tend to listen to a very wide range of things, which is very much like us. It's a very eclectic mix of people… So it's a really interesting and fascinating demographic that we target, because it's got to include everybody.” being forced to, through not being able to get in the game originally, they went their own way.”
“I've been into New Era my whole life. I remember my first hat as a child was an NY classic. I was rocking that as a little nipper, when I was like four. There's literally photos of me in it and it's too big for me. It's hanging over my ears. But to actually get to collaborate and work with the brand is really something."
“The commitment of New Era is obviously quite a big thing to carry with you. I feel like that's quite an inspirational thing to take, that something 100 years old is still going quite strong. I wish I could be a hundred years old and still play the drums, but it's not going to happen is it?”