Smerz keep the diary open on Easy EP

Norwegian duo Smerz release Easy EP on 15 May via Escho, following the acclaim around their 2025 album Big City Life and its later remix edition. Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt have built a sound that feels like club music remembered from another room: breathy, off-kilter, intimate and slightly unstable.

Easy EP appears to come from a looser process than Big City Life, more like a daily journal than a tightly plotted narrative album. The six-track project includes Somewhere, Spring Summer, Spring Summer 3 Beat, Its Here, Somewhere 2 and The Room You Described. That repetition of titles is telling. Smerz seem interested in versions, moods and small changes, as if one idea can be revisited from different angles rather than resolved once.

Spring Summer gives the project a seasonal pulse, but the duo’s music rarely settles into simple brightness. It tends to carry desire, boredom, humor and emotional distance in the same breath. For indie-pop and experimental electronic fans, Easy EP is a strong 15 May release because it captures Smerz in between major statements, following a tangent, testing fragments and letting the music feel unfinished in the most interesting way. Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/smerz-reveal-new-easy-ep-and-song-spring-summer ; Release guide: https://pitchfork.com/news/new-album-releases/