More than 300 songs is a ridiculous amount of material for any songwriter to have behind her, and it makes Irina Imme’s refusal to settle into one musical lane especially interesting. Her earlier work has moved through 2000s pop melodies, pop-punk and darker rock, while Easy seems to take the most abrasive part of that palette and turn the volume up.

The first chorus on Easy caught me off guard because the song had spent just enough time holding itself together before the guitars arrived and tore that restraint open. Calling it acoustic hard rock sounds slightly ridiculous on paper, yet it makes sense within seconds of hearing the track. The arrangement stays close enough to feel exposed, then suddenly turns heavy enough to leave a physical mark. I had expected a vulnerable song from Irina’s description of the day she wrote it in March 2021. I did not expect the vulnerability to come through this much force.

When the chorus hits, she does not disappear behind the guitars or retreat into some polished pop-rock belting. She pushes the phrases forward and lets the strain stay audible, and the backing vocals arrive at exactly the moment when the song needs to widen without losing that sense of closeness. I got goosebumps there. It is a very simple reaction, but the recording earns it.

The production also has an unusual amount of physical presence. Easy sounds finished, clearly, but there is still enough looseness in the performance to suggest bodies playing together rather than isolated parts assembled into a perfect grid. You can hear control without hearing sterilisation, and the louder sections retain a little instability around the edges. I liked that immediately. That instability becomes especially effective once the guitars thicken. Instead of turning the song into a standard rock crescendo, the extra weight makes the vocal sound more exposed because Irina has to fight for the same amount of space she had in the quieter passages.

At barely two and a half minutes, Easy is almost taking the piss. Just when the song has built enough momentum for me to want another turn around that chorus, it is already over. I ended up restarting it almost immediately, partly because the track leaves that particular kind of unfinished hunger behind, and partly because the payoff arrives with enough force to make another listen feel less like repetition than an obvious next move.

What stayed with me, though, was how alive that moment felt. Easy never sounds like it is trying to manufacture catharsis for the listener. The guitars get heavier, the voice gets rougher, the backing vocals appear, and suddenly the song is almost too much. That is the point where the title stops sounding ironic and starts sounding like something the singer has had to fight for.

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