Easy Life Release New EP, 'There Can't Be This Much Water In The Sky'

Surprise!

For some, the final years of high-school and the early years of the workforce or of University - a crucially formative time of what is true adulthood life - is a joyous time of change and growth. But for others, such moments can instead be a painful, anxiety-ridden period of, that's right, change and growth. Whichever camp you may have fallen into during your own youth (or the one that you're possibly currently experiencing such as myself), it's an exciting and defining time in one's life, and it's this idea that Easy Life beautifully tap into on their newly released EP, 'There Can't Be This Much Water In The Sky'.

Growing up within the scenic surrounds of Shellharbour, New South Wales (a town that sounds like it was ripped straight from the Fallout universe) is where Easy Life’s members all came of age. So perhaps it's fitting that these young men take us on a tour of their hometown with the new film clip for their EP's lofty melancholic opener, 'Light Me Up'.

“Growing up in a small town, there’s not a lot of opportunity,” says the band's vocalist, Max Pasalic. “The trajectory for a lot of kids is either you go to year 10, you get a trade and that’s your life or you go to year 12, get a university degree and move to Sydney and that’s your life. I can sit in my town and live a simple life for myself, or I can choose the left-hand path and take the next step.”

The band's use of gripping lyrics and effective melodic elements takes licencing from bands such as Basement, Citizen, and Endless Heights, perhaps best seen on songs like 'I'm Fading Away' and '21'. However, such sounds are awash all over this EP; like a sheer cathartic downpour. The group also deeply channel heavier, more hardcore-orientated influences akin to that of Casey, Counterparts, and Capsize because after all, even the saddest of sad boys need to mosh sometimes. Yet no matter their sound's sense of duality, Easy Life's music is all-encompassing emotion and poetic honesty put to tape.

“I was in a tough place in my life at the start of last year,“ admits Pasalic, before explaining the EP's thought process and the emotional investment in it for himself. “The anxiety and everything that comes with it not only destroyed me but I exploded and had a bit of a meltdown and the story arc of the record is a different stage of that and how I was feeling.”

Curiously enough, the EP's third song, 'I’ll Leave You Behind' reaches it's immense six and a half-minute melodic hardcore conclusion with Shia LaBeouf reading aloud the words: “Nothing can define me. Not my anxiety. Not own mind. Just myself”. This particular personally bittersweet line is actually a piece that Pasalic submitted as part of LaBeouf, Säde Rönkkö & Luke Turner’s #andintheend performance art event at the Sydney Opera House last year where patrons were given the starting motif of "and in the end..." and were then asked to conclude it in front of the three artists/panelists in an empty but no less grand Sydney Opera House interior. The more you know. (My personal favourite showing from last year's typically LaBeouf-styled event was someone's piece of "And in the end, it was the chicken").

Easy Life - whose current roster includes Pasalic, guitarists Jack Rankin and Jesse Mate-Gallo, bassist Kurt Haywood and drummer Jordan Pranic - formed back in 2014 with the original goal of escaping their small town and trekking down unknown roads. And I think that with this more than solid new EP and with UNFD now behind them, many unknown roads will be mapped out in this band's time.

This is only the beginning.

Grab Easy Life's debut EP here via UNFD. October will see the band embark on their first Australian-wide tour with Endless Heights, all info here.