More about: Sundara Karma

Performance has always been a central tenet of Sundara Karma’s scripture. Having formed in 2011 and graced the stage of Reading’s taste-making Purple Turtle nightclub countless times, plus an abundance of festival appearances, they finally released their long-awaited debut album in 2017—the buoyant Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect to huge acclaim.

Over five years they spent honing their art before inscribing it in stone forever. This ideology is the beating heart of Sundara Karma, a fascinating band that writes near exclusively for the stage, striving to make each chorus an opus, a battle cry to be heard from one end of the festival site to the other.

Their 2019 album Ulfilas’ Alphabet began toying with this indie-pop skeleton, swapping jangly guitar-led choruses with more textural, psychedelic influences, heard in the coda of the enchanting ‘Illusions’. However, their 2020 EP Kill Me compounded this metamorphosis, approaching every layer with a more maximalist approach, filling out space with noise-rock chaos and shredding glam solos, setting themselves on a different trajectory altogether. Welcoming Hannah Diamond (of PC Music fame) as creative director and confidante of vocalist Oscar Pollock, plus Clarence Clarity (Rina Sawayama, Dorian Electra) on production, this chapter of Sundara Karma is a whole new beast. Pollock invites us in to describe this transformation, exhibited in full technicolour on the striking new EP Oblivion!.

“The two EPs are definitely siblings. They go hand in hand, and the headspace I was in was fairly similar,” Pollock says of Kill Me and Oblivion!. Joining from his London home via Zoom, Pollock is calm and collected about his band’s upcoming EP, understanding its dramatic page-turning potential for Sundara Karma.

“I feel we've grown a lot over the past two years, during this pandemic. I guess I don't know how this will be received. I just hope that once it's out, it will attract like-minded people. And it will open up doors into areas that we haven't yet been embraced by.” In brief: Oblivion! is a decadent cornucopia of Pollock’s accumulated creative and musical visions from his now-beyond ten-year tenancy as Sundara Karma’s frontman.

Lead single ‘Godsend’ is an operatic alt-pop masterpiece that pairs glistening verse tension with flurries of horn stabs and a yearning chorus of ‘Oh’s’ that conjures stadium-filling tableaus, whilst the throbbing ‘All These Dreams’ is a SOPHIE-inspired ritzy pop pastiche, with Pollock confessing he’s “far too emotional” about his unfulfilled dreams.

“We were quick to be lumped together with similar groups at the time,” Pollock recalls, regarding their late 2010s festival circuit, performing with the likes of indie lovelies Blaenavon and The Wombats on countless occasions. With their new releases more akin to maximalist alt-pop, Pollock reflects on trying to break free from this pre-determined mould. He laughs: “I'm a Sagittarius so I get bored very quickly, and I'm constantly looking for new things that excite me. That's a good thing and a bad thing, but I think as soon as those songs [off their debut] were out, I was ready to go and do something else, you know?”

Recalling the processes and receptions of their past albums, Pollock posits: ”I think our first album was so straight down the middle that the second one was a response to that; it was a chance, as we were still with a major label. We wanted to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck really. So I think that was the beginning stages of making less traditional choices and then the EPs just followed on from that.”

Beginning as an anthemic indie band, Pollock understands that his fanbase may have diversified in this time, having brought in both the peripheral scenes of Clarity and Diamond by osmosis through the production process. “People are capable of expressing more than one part of themselves at a time. So I don't know why we wouldn't be able to [play from our full discography]. But there are definitely some songs that won't make it, to make room for new songs. We’ll always play ‘She Said’ and ‘Flame’, but I think a lot of people won't want to come and see us. I think we've definitely lost fans from that era that were expecting us to put out more of the same. The people that come will be aware of where we're at as a band.”

Despite departing from some strands of their older sound, Pollock is keen to express their power-pop DNA is still present, and tent-filling choruses are a guarantee on Oblivion!. “I've always been obsessed with pop music and well-crafted songs. My first musical love was Westlife, and I still listen to those songs—they’re just amazingly well-written pop songs that take you from the verse to the chorus so exquisitely. That's something I've never got tired of, and hopefully, I'm getting better as time goes on.”

Pollock’s vocals are a standout focal point of the EP, emphasising the reach of his gossamer voice that has been actively developed with Clarity’s oversight. ”My singing style is something that I've played around with over the years. How I sound on the first record compared to the second is really different. Even now compared to the second record is also very different, I’ve enjoyed using my voice as another extension of texture. It definitely feels like the music and my voice are in harmony more so now than ever.”

He continues: “Clarence has given so much, I wouldn't have wanted to do this with anyone else. [On Oblivion!] we consciously decided to make them really dry sounding, because that was more reminiscent of early 2000s American rock and a lot of pop songs from that era.”

When questioned about a hyper-pop influence, Pollock understands its bearing on his work but doesn’t draw many parallels. “There are definitely aspects of it that I find intriguing because there's a lot of progression there. I think there's a lot of boundaries that have been pushed [on Oblivion!], but I think that the maximalist aspects of what we've been doing are influenced by Clarence Clarity, who has been producing the tracks. I just wanted to create something a little bit more immediate.” Pollock’s acute awareness of his far-reaching influences evidences a heavily perceptive artist, one who has spent enough time in the public eye to be wary of hammering the same nail over and over again.

But whilst Kill Me played with these influences in a carefree manner, Oblivion! magnifies them, fabricating a more nebulous set of tracks, seemingly categorisation-averse. Oscar reveals “Kill Me was a stepping stone, and Oblivion! is also a stepping stone. I don't feel we've arrived at something [yet]. But I feel that we're getting closer to something—that may be the following album that comes out.”

Pollock cites his blossoming creative partnership with Hannah Diamond as a source of the pearlescent art direction for Oblivion!, stating: “It comes down to having someone like Hannah that I can talk to, bounce ideas off and build a world with. It is something I've always wanted to do, but I really benefited from her input. I just want to see bands look a little bit more fabulous. And I guess that’s just what we’re trying to be.”

With the EP due imminently, Pollock’s candid recognition of the Reading outfit’s flux is comforting. He realises he cannot blossom creatively in a state of stagnation, and neither can the band. Their disruptive evolution has produced some of their most formidable songs to date, with Oblivion! a statement of intent for all future releases.

Oblivion! arrives 1 April via Chess Club/AWAL.

Issue Three of the Gigwise Print magazine is preselling now! Order here.

More about: Sundara Karma