By: Tuhin Chakrabarti
3 mixtapes in, Easy Life’s Junk Food professes their signature, lethargically desirous affect amid a jazz-informed, melancholic pop landscape. Their songs are distinctly coming-of-age, with a buoyant youthfulness that seems suffocated by the austerity of adulthood. The result of this juxtaposition are dreamy songs soaked in youthful malaise, exhibiting the self-conscious escapism of leisure in your early 20’s.
Vocal lullabies intertwine with refined, glossy synths and guitar progressions to create a sheen for the rugged low end on this mixtape. What this mixtape lacks in melodic progression, it makes up for in rhythmic solidity. It is a pop mixtape, after all. Sam Hewitt’s bass playing is impeccably locked in, and is rather exceptional on “Nice Guys” and “Sangria.” The broad constellation of rhythm-centric inspirations (funk, hip-hop, etc.,) solidify this mixtape’s position as an exhibition of the Internet Generation’s eclectic taste — harking back to the theme of being 20-something.
Past singles by the Leicester, England collective are soaked in personal experience and macroscopic observations, kind of like a Gen Zer’s twitter account. It will go from waxing poetic about anxiety and the attention economy (“Nightmares”), to mourning missed rent payments (“Pockets”), to discussing climate change’s catastrophic shadow on our world (“Earth”). The band demonstrates the complicated apathy of the burnt out youth — they can’t afford to not give a shit. “Earth” is enthused and personal, and it seems that the motivation behind the song wasn’t any actual climate catastrophe, but the frontman feeling detached from his Earth: “I don’t feel at home on this planet,” the chorus whimpers. "The song isn't all 'save the whales', it just sort of alludes to it - but I felt like loads of my mates were talking about it, so why not put it in a song?” said their frontman, Murray Matravers, in a BBC interview. While this “whatever” attitude can be perceived as a devilish indication of ignorance, it’s equally charming, especially on Junk Food, which is intimate and universally despondent. This polarity dictated my listening experience.
Lyrically, metaphors work to place a poetic sheen over everyday worries. “Who’s gonna pick up the spiders, be the candy underneath my eyelids,” Matravers intones on “Spiders,” where he beckons for an ex-lover to come back, ease his fears and be his light again. Goosebump-inducing, romantic lyrics thread through this whole piece, emotionally taxing the listener. The writing is impressive and defines nebulous emotions with precision.
Natural string pads coat ambient space with emotion, and melodramatic, neo-soul chords dance with languor over multi-layered lyrics. Junk Food is an exhibition of hedonistic pleasure, avoidance, desperate love, and all things that mark coming-of-age in the Western first-world with precision and light-minded humor. Through a musically kaleidoscopic palette, Junk Food breaths truth into youthful adulthood.