Album Review
It’s Karma It’s Cool
One Million Suburban Sunsets
DL / streaming
Released 24 October 2025
From Lincoln, fourth album from a band who burst the confines of the genre they are best known for. It’s Karma It’s Cool are now a proper contemporary rock band in search of an audience who want big anthemic tunes, stadium-sized angst that somehow lifts you out of a generational mid-life crisis. Ged Babey waves his lighter in the air.
There are not many bands like this I can honestly say I really-like… The Manics, Placebo, Muse (in moderation) – the ‘arena gig’ is not my natural habitat, I much prefer the small venue. Which is where you will actually find It’s Karma It’s Cool, but it’s just they sound ready for big, open-air stages based on this new album.
It was one song that got me hooked. I wrote about it. ‘A Kick-ass English REM’. The previous single was great too. Then I discovered they are one of my ‘net mate’ Barry’s favourite bands. Nothing better than a personal recommendation.
It’s Karma It’s Cool go for a big sound on this album, a ‘play loud’ rock and roll sound – BUT, at the same time they have quiet, tuneful, melodic moments and words of wisdom to whisper in your ear. Melancholy and bombast. Tears and little victories. Adversity and anthems to punch the air to.
They aren’t a young band, but they aren’t old geezers, this is them taking stock and taking onboard the whole history of popular rock music from the 60’s to now. The benchmarks being (probably) the Beatles, the Byrds, Nirvana and Radiohead, via U2 and REM…(and more) and making their own music out of their varied influences.
Their previous albums fell into the Powerpop or Country Rock umbrella which they felt constrained by.
Bands hate to be labelled and pigeonholed and I’m sure it’s Karma, it’s Cool are no exception. It’s lazy journalism and a necessary evil at the same time. How are they gonna find a wider audience with some clues or signposts.
‘I suppose they sound a bit like The Killers – big catchy songs’ the bloke down the pub would tell you.
But their sound is an unfashionable mixture of REM, the Bends-era Radiohead, soulful Big Country meets Manics type rock with a dash of metal (guitar solo’s) and The Waterboys soul and tenderness.
It is the consistent quality of the songwriting which is IKIC’s main strength and like any band the focus is on the singer and Jim Styring does have a great distinctive voice. It’s mid-way between Feargal Sharkey and Michael Stipe somehow – with a bit of Ian Broudie maybe. It’s not a rock bellow or crushed gonad falsetto – just a voice that’s naturally warm and tuneful without trying too hard.
Musically One Million Suburban Sunsets does go from loud to quiet and back again on almost every song but it seems natural and creates a dramatic tension and release. Big bombastic woah-oh-oh’s and full on guitar solos are there but it never feels like a bloated-cock-rock parody – more like great lost bands Whipping Boy and Into Paradise but that’s probably just me.
A track called ‘Swans‘ is the stand-out song, by a nose (or a beak) to my mind, although there isn’t a duff track on the album. It deserves to be a massive hit on ‘drivetime’ radio – if they didn’t only play ‘hits’ from ‘across the decades’. It’s one of those mid-paced, lighters-aloft, catchy but strangely emotional songs that you get stuck in your brain. I asked Jim about it.
I always leave {lyrics} open to interpretation. It’s more important what the listener believes than what I had in mind when I wrote them. Swans, however, is basically about never giving up on something that is important to you. These so called ‘experts’ telling us that rock and roll is dead and buried. As long as we, as humans, have emotions, songwriters will continue to write, bands will continue to form, our music will continue to thrive. Basically, if you believe in something , don’t let anyone put you down.
I remember seeing, or reading something, about the Yangtze River in China being so polluted that the native dolphins were thought to have died out. Years later when the big clean up started, they returned, seemingly from nowhere. That story just stuck with me, kind of like a metaphor for rock and roll.
Finally it came to me who IKIC remind me of – and oddly, it’s The Cranberries (but with a male vocalist obviously) – a much under-rated musical outfit from my (jaundiced hipster-punk) point of view who I only succumbed to after my wife played them a lot in the car.
One Million Suburban Sunsets is ‘driving music’ in both senses of the phrase. It’s not radical but it is full of heart, soul and ambition and great songs.
It’s Karma… are cool. This is their finest hour. Give or take 10 minutes.
All words Ged Babey with PR content in italics
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