By Hannah Reid

Leslie Pereira & The Lazy Heroes are a Los Angeles-based quartet, and they’re a band I’ve never really heard of before and I didn’t know a whole lot about them when I started listening. This is the second album by the band and was mixed together by Karen Bassett of The Pandoras and The Kariannes.

The opening and title track ‘Good Karma’ has interesting backing vocals and lyrics throughout the song which to me seem a little weird and out of place in some areas, but I did enjoy the instruments for most of the song. In the middle there was this absurd shift which seemed thrown in there to try and make it seem a bit more interesting and just didn’t match with the rest of the song.

‘If I Could’ and ‘In My Backyard’ were two songs I just could not get into them and I felt a little bored listening along. ‘Hot Tamale’ I thought started off that it could be really strong, but then it seemed to drop flat when the vocals came in and that build-up that was happening just disappeared. I found very samey all the way through, and I didn’t think it really had that kick of a song that I needed to get into it, and it just felt really flat to me personally.

I really enjoyed the opening to ‘Slip’ and I thought it had potential to go somewhere, and I admit I did enjoy the male vocals throughout which I thought matched a whole lot better than the female ones, which (again) felt out of place and put in as an afterthought. ‘Racecar’ changes out the singing throughout the album and is more spoken into the mic, the highlight of the song being the instrumentals which seem to be holding everything up at this point.

‘I’m Waiting’ had potential and was probably the only song that I liked a little bit as I was listening – one that I didn’t have to try and not skip. It had punchy lyrics and vocals, which up until this point I don’t think I’d heard and it just stood out a whole lot more compared to everything else. It seemed that everything came together for the band in this song, which I find slightly amusing that it was called ‘I’m Waiting’ because this was the song I was waiting to hear from them!

And then from the high of that last song, we come back down a little bit to ‘Not To Me’ which has more moments of vocals not matching up with the melody. There were moments in this one where I thought I could like it, but sadly they didn’t stay long. The final song in the album is ‘Coraline (Where Are You)’ which I think has the weakest start point lyrically out of everything in the album. It’s just more strange points that I just cannot get behind and found myself almost cringing at how they sounded.

Unfortunately, this was a band and an album that I just could not for the life of me get into. I found it almost a chore to try and listen to what was going on as everything sounded quite the same (not in a good way). I didn’t think the vocals and the instrumentals went together in a lot of the songs and they stood out for all the wrong reasons. Other than the one song ‘I’m Waiting’, nothing stood out as something I would go back for and listen to again, and this isn’t an album I would reach for again.

  • ‘Good Karma’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.

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