Hard Life – onion

Label: Island Records
Released: 18th July 2025

‘onion’, the new album from Hard Life, is a raw, unvarnished snapshot of frontman Murray Matravers’ life in disarray, built from the rubble of legal battles, fractured relationships and bruised hope. From the moment opener ‘tears’ spills out – detailing the band’s very public courtroom struggles – it’s clear this is the sound of a songwriter holding nothing back.

‘OGRE’ follows with sad, strange honesty, its quickfire confessional delivery masking the bleak heart of a relationship collapse. Even ‘crickets!!!!’, which hints at something more playful, eventually descends into introspective gloom (“I’m driving into traffic just so I can sit a minute crying”), capturing the album’s uneasy dance between fun and crushing melancholy.

It often feels like Murray noodling away on his own, grief and confusion laid bare across a tangle of glitchy beats, woozy synths and uneasy melodies. But there’s method in the madness. From the precisely ordered track names – ‘OCTOpus’ sits as track eight, ‘tele9raph hill’ at nine, for example – to the strong narrative arc that runs through the record, ‘onion’ is deeply considered, even as it radiates the chaos of personal implosion.

‘othello’, already a standout single, remains a highlight – a moody anthem about making peace with the mess, straddling heartbreak and relief with surprising grace. By the end, it’s hard not to feel Murray’s catharsis bleeding through every note: bruised but unbroken, inviting you into his world of tears, tangled emotions and small, hard-won triumphs.

‘onion’ isn’t easy listening, nor is it trying to be. But it’s brave, painfully honest and peppered with moments of stark, off-kilter beauty. It cements Hard Life not just as scrappy underdogs, but as serious chroniclers of what it means to be human when everything else falls apart.