hard life have gone through, what is arguably, their hardest year on record, and even worse? They had to do it under the eye of public scrutiny. They aren’t however, letting it define them, with a tumultuous rebrand and a new record to be released, hard life are back and “raring to go”.

With three singles so far from this new era, their third record ‘onion’ is set for release this Friday, with an autumn/winter tour to follow. 

Ahead of its unveiling, we sat down with hard life frontman Murray Matravers to discuss all things ‘onion’, name changes and musical collaborations.

We’re here with Music Is To Blame and I’d love to ask what’s to blame for your career in music?

Probably boredom. I spend a lot of time very bored, and whenever that happens, I end up making music, so thank God for boredom!

You’ve got your next album due out soon - what can you tell us about ‘onion’?

I suppose for a lot of time, I thought I'd never write another album, so I’m really proud of ‘onion’, it’s the most raw and honest I’ve been on a record - I was deadline with some pretty crazy sh*t at the time, and I’m just glad I was able to make it. ‘onion’ gave me my inspiration back, my conscience that I can make music no matter what life throws at me. 

Why did you think you’d never make another album?

We went through so much as a band, and sometimes it's hard to pick yourself up and carry on in those situations. Life happens to all of us, it comes at you sideways and backwards and I didn’t want to be all “woe is me, why is my life so difficult?”. In general, moving from A to B is challenging for all of us, and sometimes I wonder if music is necessary or worthwhile. There’s a lot of self-doubt, especially as someone going through a very public lawsuit.

Obviously, your biggest public obstacle has been the name change -  but the fan response has been incredibly positive, and everyone’s stuck by you - what’s been the hardest part of the name change?

Choosing a name is the sh*t part about being in a band, I never think there’s any good names - I didn’t think easy life was one, I don’t think hard life’s a good name. I don’t think Arctic Monkeys is one either - they’re all terrible aren’t they?

I suppose the hardest part of changing the name was that we had to choose a band name in public. Most people get to do that in private, and no one gives a shit and it's kind of largely irrelevant. With every project ever the name is irrelevant really, it would be good by another name name - I suppose we just hope that that would be the case with our project a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. 

With doing it in public too there was a barrage of suggestions of what we should call the band. It was a challenging time in our lives for sure.

Are you taking this opportunity to rebrand yourselves in any other way?

It's exactly the same sh*t, just with a different name. As a writer, I’ve always written what I wanted, and stylistically, things have changed a lot during my career - which isn’t the same for every songwriter. Some people find their niche and just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and I've got a lot of respect for those people too, but for me, like that just sounds really f*cking boring - so I'm often changing stuff. 

The name change didn't really provoke a particular change in my mind, but I think just in general, my music taste and the stuff I want to make is always changing, so I think ‘onion’ is different from my other records, but that's not because of the name. It's just because I'm older and have a different perspective.

‘Maybe In Another Life’ was my album of 2022, and I can’t help but be obsessed with the Mac Miller reminiscence of it - what artists inspire your sound?

I listened to a lot of Kendrick Lamar, whether or not that informs my sound is a completely different question. Frank Ocean for sure. I don't have a particularly niche music taste, I just listen to a lot of American hip hop and pop music and I suppose that bleeds into the sound.

We never reference anything in this record - but we did start out that way. We’d bring something in and try to make something like the song we loved, whether that be the tempo, the feeling, the chord or the emotion, and whenever we did that our music just sounded a bit sh*t.

So very quickly and early on in the process, we were like “let's just do whatever it is we want to do”. At times that meant we were making really weird music and stuff that doesn't fit in my genre at all - a lot of electronic music was made, actually, in that time. But it also means there’s no particular direction you’re heading in and you end up in a really interesting place. With ‘onion’ it just meant that everything was very raw and real, we just wanted to do whatever we were feeling, and if that’s a drum and bass song that’s fine. 

So far from the record you’ve released ‘y3llow bike’, ‘ogre’ and ‘othello’, these tracks takes a more mellow approach to the hard life sound, in comparison to tracks like ‘skeletons’ and ‘pockets’ - does the rest of the record follow suit or do we have some hidden bangers?

It's definitely feeling a lot more mellow. In contrast with ‘skeletons’ and ‘pockets’ it’s very different - I wrote those songs five, six, seven years ago. The world has turned around many times since then. I've changed, I’m almost 30.

So, maybe I'm not trying to write big f*cking festival songs, I’m just in my feelings writing mellow sh*t because that's what feels good for me right now. But that's not to say that I'm going to continue to just like, mellow out and in 20 years' time, I'll be making ambient music. I don't think that's the case, I’m just very reactive as an artist. I think perhaps the next album might be full of fucking festival smash hits, maybe, it's hard to tell.

You’ve collaborated with the likes of Kevin Abstract and Arlo parks - are there any names you’d love to add to this list?

There aren't a lot of people that make music that sounds like us, so collaboration has always been a bit tricky. Arlo was great, it came at the right time. We met really early on in both of our careers, and Kevin, we'd always been like mutual fans of each other, so that was great - it’s always been organic. 

I could say  I really want to work with Drake, but I don't know Drake and we probably don't have a lot in common, so I think making music is gonna be quite difficult, but if you think about someone like Arlo, especially back then we had a lot in common and we were singing and writing about the same ideas and the collaboration was very natural. So I think collaboration's hard because you really do have to be, it's all timing, you've got to be coming at something from those same places, at the same time and I feel like the universe just presents those opportunities to you and you can't really chase them. 

What can fans expect from a hard life live show?

Everyone in the band is so gassed to be playing live. There was a time in our career where we were touring so much that the idea of playing shows was not that exciting for us, it was quite difficult for a while, especially on the longer tours. We haven't shied away from that in the media, so that's totally fine to say, but this tour feels like our first ever tour again. It's actually quite a short tour as well for us, there's not loads of dates, we're just in and out. We won’t have played headline shows for two years at that point, we’re really excited. 

Sum up your sound in three words.

Really really good.

hard life – 2025 UK HEADLINE TOUR

Tue 28 Oct – Leeds – O2 Academy

Wed 29 Oct – Bristol – O2 Academy

Thu 30 Oct – London – O2 Academy Brixton

Mon 3 Nov – Newcastle upon Tyne – The Boiler Shop

Tue 4 Nov – Glasgow – SWG3 Galvanizers

Thu 6 Nov – Manchester – Manchester Academy

Mon 10 Nov – Nottingham – Rock City

Lana Williams

@_lanaajade

Image: Chuff Media

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