Easy Life

9th October 2019

St Lukes, Glasgow

Well this was rather more fun than I had expected, as Leicester-based five-piece Easy Life wowed a youthful and decidedly excitable audience this evening, with their slightly odd brand of alt-poppy, occasionally jazzy, hip-hop tinged stuff.

It was a touch disappointing to see front man Murray Matravers adopting a conventional rapper persona with designer stubble and overlarge baseball cap pulled down over his face.  I rather liked the refreshingly geeky look he used to sport.

The lads certainly appeared a musically talented lot, picking up and dropping instruments with dizzying regularity.  And those tunes where saxes and a trumpet were layered into the mix really stood out, I felt.    

Although I have to say I may have been rather more impressed had I been sure all I was hearing this evening was actually being performed in the here and now.  For I am sure I noticed one point during proceedings where a sax interlude being performed by Sam Hewitt appeared to linger for just an important second or so after the instrument's mouthpiece had left his lips.  Which, of course, gave birth to the suspicion that not only were click tracks being used here (christ, who doesn't use them these days?), but much of what we were listening to was on pre-recorded backing tracks.  

I am old-fashioned enough to prefer to hear a sax played live (however poorly), rather than listen to a recorded loop of one being initiated by the keyboard player pressing one of the big square buttons on his sequencer/sampler device (as on Nightmares).

But, Hey.  So What.  Easy Life were clearly here in the flesh, and were playing “live” - just over a recorded backing, the full extent of which will forever remain a mystery to those of us on this side of the stage.  

Not that the bouncing bairns in the mosh-pit this evening cared a jot.

Easy Life - Glasgow October 2019