Sundara Karma’s ‘Better Luck Next Time’: after-party, alt-pop perfection
Brit-rock quartet Sundara Karma’s third studio album, Better Luck Next Time, harkens straight back to 2010s indie rock and the reign of Tumblr: fishnets under denim shorts, Doc Martens, and all.
It’s as melancholy as it is uplifting, youthful yet wise, and sprinkled with the right amount of nostalgia for early listeners of the band and general enjoyers of NME-era alternative.
Sonically, BLNT feels like a direct follow-up to their debut, Is Youth Only Ever Fun In Retrospect? (2017), but with a maturity and confidence in songwriting that comes with the six years — and numerous successful experimental projects in between — since its release.
Album opener “Baby Blue” bursts forth with an unstoppable energy, the first riff gripping me with the same force as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ “Bad Reputation.” Frontman Oscar Pollock’s voice booms through while professing his love for someone he never expected to fall for. The track sounds like the climax of a John Hughes film when the protagonist and the antihero reach the pinnacle of their enemies-to-lovers plot line.
“Friends of Mine,” as previously covered, is a love letter to all the friendships we make (or have made), and how sometimes, when we’re “caught in the rain,” we just need to call our friends up and come “back to life.” In addition to Pollock’s gripping vocals, Ally Beaty’s guitar riffs, Dom Cordell’s bass boost and Haydn Evans’ beam on this record with an anthemic optimism.
The whole album feels like it feels the room with unbridled emotion, the bittersweetness of youth, heartbreak, and self-discovery encapsulated in guitars and synth.
B-sides “Violence to the Spirit” and “Sounds Good to Me” were the vocal and lyrical standouts of this album. “Violence to the Spirit” tackles the heartbreak of self-awareness when you know you have to stop (un)intentionally causing harm to yourself, be it through the company you keep or distracting yourself from pain through dance and drink. It’s a song of rebirth and accepting that the you of the past and of the present can live in harmony, but that growth needs to be down.
Keep ’em round but never let them know
Just how deep the trouble and your worries go
And I know that it’s depressing
Too far gone, too sickening to explain
Took a while just to realise
That there’s a thousand other reasons why
One of these days it’s really gonna be goodbye
“Sounds Good to Me” details the flame of a passionate love that burnt out quickly, and while one person’s since moved on, the other is still burnt by the heat of the candlewick. Pollock sings with the anguish of someone whose heartstrings are in a tug of war between the feelings for his ex and not wishing to destroy the happiness his former lover has found. In a classic case of “fake it till you make it,” the frontman bids his ex goodbye with the simple acknowledgment, “sounds good to me.”
BLNT is simply a joy to listen to, from beginning to end. It feels like a comfort album of sorts, particularly as leaves and lives are changing with each passing day. This feels akin to the records I grew up with, some of my parents’ influence, some I discovered through endless hours of radio, YouTube or a lucky find at a record store. The record simultaneously captures the energy of Boy Kill Boy’s Civilian (2006), the melancholic aura and crescendo of Kings of Leon’s Only by the Night (2008), and the youthful spark of The Kooks’ Junk of the Heart (2011) and Let’s Go Sunshine (2018), all albums that I turn to when I need a daily dose of nostalgia. BLNT feels like the album you throw on the day after an autumn party, walking home with a coffee in hand, wind in your hair, and excitement for what the day holds.
