Fresh off the festival circuit Sundara Karma will play The 1865 in Southampton on 29th September in support of their debut record Youth Is Only Fun In Retrospect. The four piece hail from Reading and consist of singer/guitarist Oscar ‘Lulu’ Pollock, lead guitarist Ally Baty, bassist Dom Cordell and drummer Haydn Evans. This may well be Sundara Karma’s debut but don’t be fooled, they have been performing together since they were 14 and have built quite the following in that time – you just need to look at their hometown heroes welcome inside a packed NME/Radio 1 tent at this year’s Reading festival to see how accomplished the band already is.
Sundara Karma is taken from the Sanskrit for ‘beautiful/noble’ karma, the spiritual principles behind cause and effect – so what better way to kick off Freshers 2k18 then to charge your chakras in one of Southampton’s best venues in the heart of the city? Happy go luck rockers The Magic Gang will support Sundara Karma on the night and throughout their UK tour. The buoyant four piece from Brighton will compliment Sundara Karma’s sun kissed indie pop perfectly. Infectiously catchy tracks like ‘How Can I Compete’ and ‘All This Way’ will bounce around your head for weeks. Oh, and bassist Gus was once a contestant on Raven! Always handy to have a warrior in the rhythm section.
Sundara Karma’s opulent pop rock is tailor made for the cavernous expanse of The 1865. Catchy riffs over melancholy lamentations of adolescence may well seem familiar but Sundara Karma’s sophistication (their songs are littered with references to Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Manet) and psychedelic fizz give them an edge. Front man Oscar Pollock is draped in the same velvety androgyny that once adorned Bowie and Prince, he couldn’t be anything else but a rock star.
‘She Said’ is a stand out from their debut, a zippy, exuberant ode to the dance floor. ‘Loveblood’ sees Sundara Karma at their boisterous, bombastic best, unabashedly fun in the same vein as the Circa Waves. The video for ‘Flame’ riffs off Plato’s allegory of the cave and the matrix – bold, yes, but the song itself is a bouncy, gut punching sing-a-long that has Pollock’s pensive melodic voice soar high.
Sundara Karma’s tour will see them play a number of shows nationwide including Cardiff, Bristol, Nottingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry, London and Liverpool ending the tour in Sheffield on the 7th October.
Tickets for Sundara Karma’s tour are available here.
