TARAN WILL looks back on Creature Habits, the 2018 EP from Hard Life—formerly known as Easy Life.
2018’s Creature Habits marked the emergence of Easy Life in the ever-saturated UK indie scene. They remain one of Leicester’s most successful recent musical exports, poised for a fully-fledged return under the name Hard Life following legal threats from easyGroup, the owners of easyJet. Across their six-track debut, they chart the trials and tribulations of their unachievable quest for exceptionality.
A minute-or-so of soaring synth lines and glamorous production set the scene on the opening track “0520”. The enduringly popular “Pockets” follows, the debut single that put Easy Life on the map in 2017. Murray Matravers’ signature vocals flourish alongside chords drenched in reverb and vibrato. The song expresses frustration and exhaustion at his material insufficiencies despite his virtues: “Cause I’ve been tryna do this right / With no profits and the loss I can’t stop it”. Personal failings and systemic contradictions are simultaneously laid bare in the second verse: “Consumption lies at the heart of my bad habits / I live in a world where I want but can’t have it”. The quest for exceptionality starts on the rocky footing of perpetual struggle for what one doesn’t possess. A desire for romantic authenticity first appears here also, with Matravers exclaiming, “I need some real love, to feel real”. His innate desires intertwine with unhealthy, unrealistic social norms.
The third track, “Ice Cream”, is a supersonic extolling of infidelity in which Easy Life tests the limit of narrative protagonism through vast contradiction and inevitable failure. Amongst risk, excitement, and references to frozen goods, Matravers inverts his previous desire for authentic romantic love into settling for false, self-destructive moral darkness:“I’m falling in love with a girl but I’m just a side piece”. By the second verse, he states nonchalantly the paradox of his condition: “I appreciate that this is going nowhere / But all my days off I’m dreamin’ that she will come over”. Reaching the instrumental and narrative climax at the second chorus, all agency is revoked, and this inevitable ruin comes to pass: “I can’t feel bad for my mechanics and creature habits / So let’s change the dynamic / Until we crack the ceramic / And it’s all over”. The human condition is one of internal conflict. Failing is expected; it’s normal. But the extremities of glorified faithlessness begin to construct a contentious, unreal normalcy of heightened reality—and in this case, moral bankruptcy—“She smiles as she betrays him”.
Subverting romantic desire on “Lust”, Matravers lists all he desires materially. Diverging from the conventional “chandeliers and chardonnay” to the humorously bizarre “porcelain ashtray, unused bidet”, the subsequent saxophone solo—itself a marker of luxury—affirms these unrealistic aspirations. In a world of programmed desires, “platinum filling for [your] tooth decay” and “unpolished concrete so grey” suddenly don’t seem so extreme. The vortex of consumerism reaches its climax at the track’s finale: “Hit the road I’m too far gone”. Obsession with desire can result in the loss of all one has.
Amongst a satisfying bassline groove and substantial ear candy behind record noise, “Silverado” represents an entire suspension of reality. Gone is the perpetual struggle that has plagued Matravers in different forms over the three tracks prior, supplanted instead with relaxation and aesthetic beauty. Lyrics invoke peaceful, escapist serenity: “The leaves in the trees they flow in the breeze that blows”. The song is a sonic trip into the realm of this—now positively inflected—heightened normalcy and achieved exceptionality. Inevitably, though, it can’t last and fades away.
Forced to face reality, “Slow Motion” moves at a stifling pace and Easy Life wants to “slow it down, sit back and relax”, but “don’t wanna miss it all”. Returning to the reality of “still melancholy Mondays” with “no champagne receptions”, there is an inevitable return to contradiction, and later failing to meet expectations and achieve our desires: “God damn I need to get laid / Instead of going to work just to get paid / I’ll eat dinner that my mother’s made”.
The final words of the EP, “don’t wanna miss it all”, suggest we’re fundamentally trapped by our desires—our own titular creature habits. Ultimately, success in their quest for exceptionality amounts to blending in to achieve this heightened, unreal normalcy. Existence is permanent stasis; we claw towards aspirations of grandeur programmed into us as normal whilst persistently failing, falling back into morally dubious or escapist paradoxes.
Upon their forced rebrand to Hard Life this year, the band closed the loop. At the hands of a multi-million-pound conglomerate, Easy Life’s quest for exceptionality met an abrupt, untimely end. Their recent single tears laments these hardships but pledges to “keep those teardrops from falling”. The band may wish to embrace Hans Ulrich Obrist’s definition of normcore to truly move forward: that ultimate liberation lies in being nothing special at all.
Featured image courtesy of Andy Bernardo, 2018.
