Darkness on this beach too…but I look for the sun
Easy Life’s Murray Matravers on his ‘warts and all’ songwriting, junk food guilt and the joy of home
It was a battle between Los Angeles and Leicester for No.1 in the UK’s album charts this week. New US teen pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour was the immovable object that stopped Easy Life’s trajectory to the top spot with Life’s A Beach.
While Sour is a Californian take on indie pop, permanently togged out in T-shirts and shorts Life’s A Beach soaks up the sun, knowing it will be short-lived and where cares, worries and regrets still bubble up even if it’s 80 in the shade. Murray Matravers fronts the quintet that formed four years ago but first met while at school in the English midlands’ city. He agrees with that general summation of their songs.
‘I think you’ve nailed it. That’s exactly the scenarios that I see too,’ says the 25 year old who is also responsible for composing most of their bittersweet songs. Yeah, you know, you’re on the beach and you’re trying to live like everything’s okay but underneath it all, it’s falling to pieces. Everyone can relate to that. I try to be positive though. I try to present the problems, sometimes deeply unsettling ones, with solutions and it’s alright because we are all in this together.’
Slightly lighter fare such as Skeletons, Daydreams and Ocean’s View float alongside songs such as Earth and Living Strange that tackle much heavier sub
‘ You’re trying to live like it’s all okay but underneath it’s falling to pieces’
ject matter. The former reflects Matravers’ ecological concerns as someone who grew up on an organic farm while the latter is about suicidal ideation. ‘I think anyone who listens to Living Strange will recognise that feeling,’ he says. ‘A lot of people
contemplate their own suicide even if they are the happiest person in world. I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time but I’m not unique in this. Sometimes my songs will be about how beautiful a day it is; other times I write about thinking about killing yourself in the back of a taxi. I’m a warts and all kind of songwriter.’
He reveals that he wrote the song with his older brother who is also a music producer and frequent collaborator. He says: ‘I wrote that with my brother Ben and he is also my best friend. I talk to him about all my sh** and say, “Mate, can you help me out?” and we go through that conversation in song. We’ve always used music as a form of communication between us. It’s particularly dark because I can talk to my brother about things that I can’t even say to myself.’
The fact that his brother was already in the music business, lessened his parents’ expectation that the younger of the Matravers brothers would work with them on the farm. But songs such as Earth reflect the concerns he shares with his parents about the planet.
‘They became organic farmers about 30 years ago long before it became cool,’ he says and laughs ‘I don’t like saying this but they’re kind of hippyish in their outlook.
‘My sister and her fiancé run the farm with them. My parents are super-environmentalists in relation to animal welfare and caring for the environment rather than a health thing. I’m actually a bit of a food nerd. I always try to eat as healthily as possible. But when you’re on tour and you find yourself awake at four in the morning, the only place open is McDonald’s and there is not a lot you can do about it. The food I eat and the fact that most of the time on tour I’m probably intoxicated means that when the tour’s finished I feel totally miserable. Then I go back to the home comforts and the organic food and everything becomes fine again.’
It might seem odd that this slightly nerdy group from landlocked Leicester would make beach-ready tunes more in keeping with the Pacific coast from which their chart rival Olivia Rodrigo hails. But, Matravers says, Easy Life’s tastes and influences are symptomatic of the times in which we live and the technology at our fingertips. ‘We are products of listening to Spotify and Apple Music. I can listen to anything from any time and anyone,’ he says.
‘When we first formed, the conversations we had were just made up of: “Have you heard this? Have you heard that?” We made playlists where you’d have Kendrick Lamar, next to the Bee Gees next to Fela Kuti; anything next to absolutely anything else. Accessibility to music and the way that has transformed us all is the biggest influence on Easy Life. In the beginning it was all about stealing the best bits of all these incredible sounds and stealing ideas used by all these amazing producers. I still do. It’s all about good stealing really.’ n Easy Life – Life’s A Beach is out now on Island Records. They play the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on November 22.
‘My brother and I have always used music as a form of communication’