Easy Livin

There is a locomotive urgency to this song that announces itself before a single lyric lands — a hammering Hammond organ locked in step with a riff that feels less composed than excavated from somewhere primal. The tempo is relentless but never frantic; it has the confidence of something that knows exactly where it's going. Ken Hensley's keyboards are the engine and the atmosphere simultaneously, churning out that grinding, circular figure while David Byron tears into the vocal with a theatrical ferocity that sits somewhere between a hard rock belter and a soul preacher who's lost his congregation. His voice is enormous and slightly unhinged, cresting into the upper register with a wild abandon that suggests joy and desperation are the same feeling. The song is about the ecstatic simplicity of choosing pleasure — of collapsing time into the present moment — and the music performs that thesis perfectly, refusing to develop in any complicated way, just pushing forward with the same glorious momentum. It belongs to the early 1970s British hard rock scene when bands were still figuring out what heaviness could mean beyond volume, and this track suggests it could mean *groove* as much as weight. Put this on when you're in a car with the windows down on a summer afternoon and you need something that makes forward motion feel like a philosophy.