Karma Glider Offer a View with Heartbreak on “Wait For You” 

The Montreal indie rockers pen a tribute to memory from their forthcoming album, From the Haze of a Revved Up Youth.

by Khagan Aslanov

It’s an old understood truism that happy tunes will only carry a listener so far before they click elsewhere to feel something properly. Montreal indie collective, Karma Glider, understand this well. Their debut, From a Haze of a Revved Up Youth (out July 11 via Mothland), feels like scrolling through old pictures in the wee hours with a sucking feeling between the ribs, sweetly insistent and sad in all the right ways. There’s serenity here, sure, but one of accepted absence, something that haunts you as much as it comforts.

Faced with an endless glut of niches and sub-genres coming at listeners with a dizzying consistency, Karma Glider do what any artist with a plan would – pull from a multitude of sources to carve a space all their own. There’s a true indie heart beating under all the subdivisions of pop that the band deploy here. Beneath the intermittent feedback, bursts of processed field recordings and sparkling guitar parts, Revved Up Youth is a collection of songs about how wonderful and sad it is to love and lose.

RANGE sat down with the band’s frontman, Susil Sharma, to talk about their stylistic choices, listening habits and the memories that drove the album’s nostalgic lilt.

Congrats on the upcoming new album! It features a variety of genres. What was the process of parsing those elements and making this fusion work?

Thank you! I feel like the variety of genres on the album is really a reflection of my listening habits. At heart, I love making noisy pop, but I definitely draw inspiration from all of those styles and I’m happy to hear they are palpable on the record. 

There were times when I was making this record that I had a specific genre/sound in mind, but sometimes you just have to let go of the reins and let some weird hybrid sounds come out.

Tell us about conceiving the video for “Wait for You.” It has a romantic, sentimental affect — were there particular memories you were dipping into? Also, what’s your cat’s name?

My cat is named Liam, after Liam Gallagher, and he is a star. The camera loves him!

So, I’ve been travelling a lot recently and I have all this footage from vans in Nepal and Peru and a Croatian ferry and I think walking around Thailand. But the whole time I was on those trips, I was looking at videos of my cat and really missing him. So that energy felt like the right thing to overlay onto this song. I’m a softy I guess. He’s just a great cat to hang out with!

Unlike a lot of shoegazers, you’ve gone for super-clean vocals in the mix. Was it a conscious choice not to fuzz up the vox?

I’ve always really loved and been inspired by the great post-punk baritone crooners like Ian Curtis, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave, as well as the New York street-smart poetry of Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, etc. Not that I am arrogant enough to include myself in such prestigious company… Anyway, I guess I just like how raw and honest that music sounds and I wanted that energy on the record. I suppose it is a bit incongruous with trad-shoegaze, but it feels right to me.

The sample-packed interludes like “Sun Beats” and “Karma Glide in Blue” feel like transmissions from another frequency. What inspired these sonic detours, and how do they connect to the rest of the album?

That’s cool to hear because it’s pretty much just what I was going for. I like going for late night drives and flicking through weird stations, picking up the programming that is maybe too out there for the drive at five type of listener. That might have had an effect on it. I also wanted those interludes to give a break from the more structured type of verse-chorus song that the record is mainly composed of.

There’s a real emotional arc running through From the Haze of a Revved Up Youth — from the chaos of youth to something more grounded. Was there a particular moment or turning point that shaped that narrative?

I guess sobriety is sort of the fulcrum of my life. It’s definitely given me some perspective on the past, and with time I think there’s a sort of narrative that has coalesced in my head. Maybe it’s not accurate though, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. More than anything, I think there are certain emotions and sensations like nostalgia and limerence that punctuated so much of my life so far and this felt like a powerful way to explore and exorcise them.

Tracks like “Fall into You” and “The Line” explore love from different angles and life stages. How has your relationship with writing about intimacy evolved over time?

I hope I’ve matured a bit in my romantic songwriting. When I listen back to some old material I feel a bit cringe. My attitude towards intimacy has changed a lot over time. I used to approach it from a very self-centred place: I was very concerned about winning people over and receiving validation. I try to give that up these days and I think there’s a sort of universal energy that directs a lot of the intimacy in my life nowadays. I’m trying to show up to that and write from that perspective.

The album draws comparisons to artists like Sonic Youth and DIIV, but it also feels uniquely Montreal. How does the city’s music culture shape what Karma Glider creates?

Well, thanks for saying that. I love both of those bands a lot. I think Montreal’s music scene has changed a lot, but it remains a hub for freaks to come and express themselves honestly and that leads to the best art. I’ve certainly cleaned my act up a bit these past few years but living somewhere that still has that energy feels really crucial to me.

What’s the future looking like for Karma Glider? Is this a long-term project — and do you want to plug any peers from the Montreal scene who inspire you right now?

We’re in it for the long-haul, baby! I’ve started writing and recording LP2 already, it’s a bit of an expansion on the sound we made on LP1. There’s a few shows and fun stuff on the horizon and we’re looking forward to playing more. 

There’s a lot of great Montreal projects right now. Off the top of my head, I love GI Jinx, Prism Shores, Same Sky, Alix Fernz, the Wesleys, TV Erased, Shunk and about a million other bands that I’m forgetting.