Charly Bliss: Forever
New York pop savants Charly Bliss want their new album Forever to crush you under the weight of pure feeling. They want to sweep you up in a hurricane of heartbreak.
When Charly Bliss sat down to write new music, they started with a simple directive: “It has to be fun.” When the writing process began in 2020, the world was in the midst of, among other things, a fun deficit, the kind of endorphin drought that only a new Charly Bliss record could remedy. “Fun is our natural state,” says guitarist Spencer Fox. “No one has more fun than us and no one loves each other more than us.” On the road, the quartet spends all their time together “giggling and being stupid.” Not surprising from a band made up of lifelong friends, including a pair of siblings. Vocalist Eva Hendricks describes the bond with her bandmates as “the biggest relationship of her life.”
Still, the rigorous experience of recording, releasing, and touring their second album, 2019’s Young Enough, left the band feeling creatively overcooked, the result of wanting everything about the record and shows to be perfect. It’s a feeling they were intent on shedding as they commenced work on their third LP. A pair of non-album singles (“I Need a New Boyfriend”, “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore”) released last year had the band and their fans primed for a new full-length album.
While working on previous albums, Charly Bliss had done their songwriting in a room together. But the Forever writing sessions began with Eva halfway across the planet in Australia. Ironically, the remote writing process brought the bandmates closer than ever. With no deadlines to hit or tour dates on the books, Fox, bassist Dan Shure, Eva and her brother and drummer Sam Hendricks took their time generating new songs. With no ticking clock, the band felt free to explore and experiment.
Eva recorded demos on her phone while sitting in a parked rental car. Several time zones away, Sam jotted down ideas in the middle of the night. Unsurprisingly, the record is suffused with a sense of sleeplessness. The jittery feeling of new love. The raw insomnia brought on by heartache. The late nights spent out (or in) with friends new and old. The full-body cringe of remembering who you used to be and learning how to love that person. You know, the kind of big feelings that make it hard to shut your brain off. Front to back, the album plays like a love letter to love letters. It was all made possible by the band giving itself space to breathe, for the individuals who make up Charly Bliss to grow together despite the distance between them.
