Live review: hard life make a joyful return to Manchester

The last time hard life played a show in Manchester, almost everything was different: the band were operating under a different name, with an additional member, and there was no sign of anything ever changing. Skip to two and a half years later, and they have experienced a potentially career-ending lawsuit, changed their name to avoid destitution, lost their saxophonist and released a new album in the form of onion.

They already proved they’ve still got what it takes to deliver exciting performances during last summer’s festival season, which saw them return to the live stage at Live at Leeds in the Park and BBC Radio One’s Big Weekend, but their first headline tour since 2023 proved even more triumphant.

As the band prepared to face the Manchester Academy crowd, an interview featuring the voice of vocalist Murray Matravers was aired over the venue’s speakers. It was barely audible, however, being drowned out by chants of “fuck EasyJet”, the airline operated by EasyGroup, which launched legal action against the band alleging copyright infringement and denouncing them as “brand thieves”.

The set aptly began with ‘tears’, their first single as hard life. It opens with the self-referential line “it’s been a hard life, I can’t lie, it’s been a rush” before daringly biting back at EasyGroup with the request “give me air miles or a fair trial” — a request that almost landed the band in legal trouble all over again due to its now-censored name-dropping of the company’s founder.

When Matravers asked “Manchester, how the fuck are we feeling? Are we good?” as ‘tears’ came to an end, there was noticeable joy in his smile, and it was evident that he stood as someone who has battled with the prospect of never returning to the stage and emerged victorious. Leaning into their early discography, hard life performed ‘sunday’, and Matravers declared “I want to see more people up” after noticing an audience member at the front atop someone’s shoulders.

From this point on, this could be witnessed during most of the set’s songs, calling back to the heyday of easy life and leading Matravers to laud the crowd’s “incredible energy”. Matravers cited his band’s final Manchester appearance under their previous name as “one of my favourite gigs I’ve ever played in the UK”, and this time around it only took four songs for him to declare that “Manchester is the best crowd in the whole of the UK every fucking time”.

After ‘sangria’ and ‘daydreams’ continued to delve into the band’s earlier discography, Matravers invited support act Woody to return to the stage, noting “he’s making me look very short” as they stood side-by-side. “Backstage I asked him if he’d ever crowd-surf”, Matravers informed the crowd, “and he said he wouldn’t, but I told him our fans are fucking amazing at that, so would you carry my good friend Woody from the front to the back?”. The Manchester Academy audience seemed eager to assist, keeping Woody in the air for the entirety of ‘y3llow bike’, one of the highlights from onion.

The band’s drummer, Oliver Cassidy, seemed to want a piece of the action himself, leaving his kit and joining the front of the stage to hype the crowd up during the sing-along moments of ‘peanut butter’. That track’s B-side ‘petty crime’ followed, before the band returned to newer material with ‘OCTOpus’ — a song which allowed Matravers to display the vocal abilities usually obscured by his sing-rap style.

“No one does it like Manchester, we love you guys”, Matravers declared, before the band performed ‘ojpl’ and ‘crickets!!!’, the latter being preceded by an admission that “I’m a bit too drunk to play the piano, but I’ll try my best”. A highlight within the set came through ‘dead celebrities’: the song may tell a tale of the dark side of twenty-first-century fame, but now the lyric “one day I could be a distant memory” has different resonances in light of recent events that threatened the band’s existence.

‘BEESWAX’ saw Matravers tastefully using autotune to imitate a buzzing sound, and was followed by a speech in which he noted that “we had some time off, we all fell out, we got sued a bunch of times, we changed our name, we seriously didn’t think this was ever going to happen again and you’ve made it happen”. Chants of “fuck EasyJet” resumed, leading Matravers to joke “you guys are going to get us sued again, shut the fuck up”.

‘DEAR MISS HOLLOWAY’ was dedicated to the father of guitarist Lewis Berry, who lost his life recently after a thirty-year battle with cancer. Matravers also mentioned a fund for the Leicester hospice where Berry’s father was able to spend the last months of his life, located at the merchandise stand at all shows on the tour.

Picking up the pace, ‘pockets’ was performed “for all the people who have been here from the start”, before the night’s only proper mosh pit was incited by ‘skeletons’. Judging from the reaction his band received from the crowd, Matravers stated “in future we’ll probably just play Manchester, everywhere else is fucking pointless”, before slowing the tempo for onion single ‘OGRE’ and earlier fan favourite ‘ocean view’ — a track based around a sample taken from one of American singer-songwriter Emilia Ali’s songs.

‘nightmares’ closed the main portion of hard life’s set, and it was nice to see that the tradition of throwing lemons around the crowd for the duration of the song has sustained despite the band’s various experiences of change.

After a brief departure, hard life returned to the stage for a single-song encore. If one track from onion were to close their performance, it had to be ‘end credits.’, a song which contemplates the possibility of leaving the band in the past. “If this is my end credits, I think I’m okay with it, If I made some people happy, that’s the sacred bit”, Matravers concludes in the chorus, before the song explodes in a cacophony of instrumentation. The effect of this was multiplied many times over live, with the band members extending the track’s ending as Matravers waved goodbye.

Despite the changes and challenges they have had to face, hard life’s first tour since changing their name has been nothing short of triumphant. Even the confetti periodically falling from the Manchester Academy rafters seemed to know it was witnessing the return of something great, and a band who have been sorely missed. The only component absent was ex-saxophonist Sam Hewitt, who helped to make the band’s earlier discography magical, but his decision to step away is understandable. Either way, hard life are back and on top form, and it’ll be exciting to see where they go next.