Sundara Karma On Reading Festival, Growing Up & Nickelback

How does it feel when you’re from Reading, and you’re about to play the main stage at your hometown’s very own 90,000+ capacity festival?

“I don't know, I think we were just sh**ting ourselves to be honest.”

I’m speaking to Sundara Karma’s Oscar “Lulu” Pollock (vocals, guitar) about playing the very greatest of homecoming shows, “It was bonkers. Like crazy surreal. Like a dream,” he tells me. “I still don't really think it happened. But it did. There's footage.”

Sundara Karma have huge potential. Sporting massive, anthemic choruses designed to pack out arenas, this indie rock foursome have the potential to cross over into the mainstream. Their songs encapsulate how it feels to be young – providing a snapshot of mistakes, debauchery and teen romance gone sour, all set in a time when the universe seems to revolve around you and your tight pack of mates. Sundara Karma are a lot of fun. Also, they sometimes wear fancy floral shirts. It’s the complete package.

When I spoke to Oscar over the phone, the band had recently come off the back of a headline tour spanning the UK. How did it feel to go from playing one of the world’s biggest festival stages, to head straight back into piping hot, intimate venues?

“Feral and a lot sweatier. It's messy. There are more people on illegal substances, and that's more noticeable. There's anarchy and chaos to it. But when you play the bigger venues, like Ally Pally, there's an energy that's larger, that's kind of more reciprocal. It's closer to a spiritual experience.”

Sundara Karma’s new single, ‘She Said’, is out this Friday, and they’ve got their long-gesticulating debut album, Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect, coming out January 6. I asked Oscar to forgive me for asking him a question that he’s probably been asked 100 times (aren’t journalists just the worst?!) about that album title…

“I guess like most people [my childhood] was up and down. There were great moments and there were pretty sh*t times. It's more to do with never really enjoying the moment, or thinking that thing was sh*t but, looking back on it, they were some of the best times of your life. I guess it's more a comment on that than anything…

"… More a comment on appreciating what you have right now. Rather than having to wait until you're a few months or a year down the line, wishing that you were in that position. Making the most out of what you've got is the real comment.”

Does the same apply to being in Sundara Karma now? Just when things are looking up for the band, does Oscar feel like he’s not enjoying being in the band as much as he should be?

“It's a really bizarre thing, because no matter how good everything gets, there's always a lack of fulfilment somewhere. So I'm sure I'll look back on this when the band's broken up and we're all waiting tables or something, and then I'll be like 'FU*K, I really should've appreciated that.'”

“We're always told by the media and our consumer society to always want more and to not be satisfied with what you've got. We're kind of doomed from the get go, almost. But I guess it's just trying to break out of that conditioning, and realise that even if you haven't got a lot, that you've still got a lot more than other people.”

One last thing. Sundara Karma are really good on Twitter. (Follow them, if you want.) A little while back, Oscar, who writes the tweets, sent out a message about Nickelback:

To which Nickelback replied, saying:

There’s something odd about this. Oscar didn’t tag Nickelback in the tweet. Is someone in Nickelback sat there, hunched over their phone, endlessly searching through Twitter to see what people are saying about them? It looks that way, and it’s a terrible idea, because if you’re in a band, and that band is Nickelback, you should never look yourself up. Don’t go there. “It's kind of like...looking for pain” Oscar says.

Has anyone ever said anything horrible about Sundara Karma online? “Oh people have, but it's all character building. And you know, to get to a stage where people start slagging you off, I think that's an achievement. Because if nobody cares about you, then nobody is going to say sh*t about you. It's definitely a mark of your success. So fair play Nickelback.”

Sundara Karma will be supporting Two Door Cinema Club (our interview with them is coming to MTV.co.uk soon) on tour across January and February 2017. For more information, click here. To keep up with Sundara Karma, follow them on Twitter here.

Follow Lucas Fothergill on Twitter.