Sundara Karma - "Kill Me" (2020)

 

Sundara Karma's second album last year was a nice development from their debut, incorporating more of their arty and glam tendencies to their indie rock and pop sound. Admittedly I have only really come back to the best tracks from that album in isolation, not really the whole record, but it showed promise that the might go onto something even better next. This EP has kind of come out of nowhere at the end of this year, and unfortunately it really isn't that.

The first track and single is the title track, which sounds a bit like early Killers singles, with loud whining guitars and an angsty and theatrical vocals from Oscar Pollock. However the track is ridiculously loud and overblown, with a really weak melody that isn't catchy at all. Lyrically I think it's going for something similar to The 1975's Love It If We Made It, trying to bombard you with how overwhelming life is and then offer a cathartic release in the chorus. However, the writing, performance and production is so flat and underwhelming that the track has no real effect or impact.

Kill Me is probably the most impactful track here, with the four other tracks suffering the same problems: weak writing, forgettable melodies and annoying production. The band do experiment with trap beats on O Stranger and autotune vocal effects on Artifice and I wish they hadn't, because they just don't work at all. There are touches of interesting instrumentation here and there, such as the woodwind on Lifelines, but they're completely suffocated by the compressed production that they don't add much at all to the tracks.

On the whole this EP feels completely throwaway. It's bland and forgettable, but so short and inoffensive that I find it hard to even care. There's nothing to unpack beyond that.

3/10