Easy Life have spoken about the struggles of talking about mental health, saying it “remains really difficult to talk about how you feel”.

The Leicester band released their debut album ‘Life’s A Beach’ today (May 28), which tackles subjects including anxiety and depression.

Speaking to NME for this week’s Big Read cover story, frontman Murray Matravers discussed the 2018 single ‘Nightmares’, which also appears on the new record. “Everyone feels like they have a lot of shit in their lives but never feel that they can talk about, so it creates this vicious cycle where we know that we should be talking about these problems, but we’re not going to because we think that no-one gives a fuck about them,” he explained.

“It remains really difficult to talk about how you feel, especially if how you feel isn’t very well or very healthy. To have that conversation, you have to put yourself in a very vulnerable place and as blokes, you’re conditioned to not be vulnerable, especially not to your girlfriend or boyfriend. We don’t want to go, ‘Actually, I’m a fucking wreck and cripplingly insecure’ because we think that’s not an attractive quality to have.”

Matravers continued to discuss the negative impacts of social media, saying young people are “constantly confronted with an idealised living of being beautiful and successful”.

“But 99 per cent of people aren’t represented [on these platforms], so it’s no wonder that they feel so terrible because they don’t see themselves achieving anything worthwhile,” he added. “That fucked with me, because I didn’t see a 5’4” farmer boy from Leicester doing anything.”

In a four-star review of ‘Life’s A Beach’, NME said: “The Leicester band have always excelled at taking with the rough with the smooth; for every song about wet weekends and after partys, there were moments of introspection and anguish about frontman Murray Matravers’ mental health and general world-weariness.

“‘Life’s A Beach’ toes that line between serenity and uncertainty once more […] Like that car bobbing between disaster and salvation [on the artwork, everything’s still to play for.”

For help and advice on mental health:

• ‘Am I depressed?‘ – Help and advice on mental health and what to do next
• Help Musicians UK – Around the clock mental health support and advice for musicians
• Music Support Org – Help and support for musicians struggling with alcoholism, addiction, or mental health issues
• YOUNG MINDS – The voice for young people’s health and wellbeing
• CALM – The Campaign Against Living Miserably for young men
• Time To Change – Let’s end mental health discrimination
• The Samaritans – Confidential support 24 hours a day