Interview: Charly Bliss
Arranging and carrying out this interview was a blast. Charly Bliss are the loveliest band out there. Buy their new album, Young Enough, here. Editing it was tremendous fun, too, and considering this interview marks the first occasion of me ever properly transcribing audio, I’d like to thank Otter for actually being a very useful app. But trying to get it published was hell for reasons I’d rather not go in to publicly. I’ve been left with no choice but to apologise to Barsuk Records, the band’s label, and self-publish. How it’s presented below is how it would have gone out had publishing this not proven to be such a difficult and uncomfortable experience for me. I can only hope the band understands.
Connecticut power-pop quartet Charly Bliss have returned with Young
Enough, the assured and considered follow-up to their wonderful debut, Guppy. The striking difference between the two albums that’s immediately clear is how Young Enough is eager to break new ground, both sonically and structurally.
The four of them — Eva Hendricks (vocals, rhythm guitar), Sam Hendricks (drums), Spencer Fox (lead guitar, backing vocals), Dan Shure (bass, backing vocals) — sat down with me to discuss the adventure they’ve already been on with the new record, the beauty of scotch eggs, and Weezer’s sudden Teal-tinged resurgence.
This interview was taken before the band took to the stage at Night People in Manchester, on May 9, 2019.
ROB: You last headlined a U.K. tour back in September 2017. So, what’s changed for Charly Bliss in the last eighteen months?
EVA: It would be hard to say what’s even happened in the past week! But no, we really worked a lot on [Young Enough]. We focused a lot on writing as many songs as we possibly could for it. When we went in to make Guppy for the first time, the mistake we made was thinking that if you’ve written ten songs then you’ve written an album, and you’re done. What we realized after the fact, when we had to scrap the first attempt at Guppy, is that it’s always better to write more songs than you need and then figure out which are the best, and also which songs work the best together. So that was really our goal for this album — we really wanted to have a massive amount of material to choose from.
ROB: Yeah, when you read about Carly Rae Jepsen making two-hundred songs for Emotion and then whittling them all down — you think, “Oh, but what about the ones we’ll never hear?!”
EVA: I know! But it’s the way to do it. I think for us, specifically on this record, something that was so helpful was that the first ten or twelve songs we wrote would have logically followed Guppy. They were songs that felt comfortable to us and were our first instinct. And we knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to make the same album twice. It was really helpful to get that out of our system and then see what happened, when we would write beyond those songs and try new things.
ROB: You’ve moved into talking about Young Enough — which is a great album, by the way, so well done! It’s not a completely new sound but you’re definitely transitioning towards something more polished. Was this always the intention for the band, or was it something that came about once Guppy was done?
EVA: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it happened very naturally. We’re all huge pop music fans — that’s the music we love the most. And especially in the past several years I feel like our tastes in music have increasingly moved in that direction, so it felt like the logical next move for us. We all think of Guppy as a pop album. Between making the two versions of it we realised we were a pop band, and that was the anchor for us throughout the whole process. Once we went into this album, it felt really natural to be moving further down that path. I don’t think we ever had a clear vision for the band when we first started — it’s hilarious, we used to make folk music! We tried on a bunch of different identities before we realised the most logical one was to be ourselves. We definitely had the intention of working with new instrumentation on this album — not to say like, “Guppy was rock! And Young Enough is pop!”
ROB: Why the name, Young Enough?
EVA: Well, first we titled the song ‘Young Enough’. And then (drummer) Sam and I discussed it and it became clear the song was the centrepiece of the album. Once that song became more focused, it felt like we’d found the missing piece, and that we could then figure out the rest of the album around that. It tells the album’s story and it made sense to name it as such.
ROB: Eva is chief lyricist, and her lyrics her very personal — at least from where I’m sitting. So, instrumentalists, how do you communicate your personal feelings into the sounds that you’ve created?
SAM: For me, personally, when I’m writing music, I’ve never really been one to pay attention to the lyrics — I don’t know why that is. Maybe I never paid enough attention in English class. But for me, music has always been about the way it makes me feel. And so yeah, I don’t know, I think you can’t really explain when ideas for songs come to you. I think it is dependent on how you’re feeling at the moment. Lyrically, ‘Young Enough’ is the centrepiece of the record, and it is sonically too, at least in terms of the emotional reaction.
SPENCER: I feel like one thing we talk a lot about, when we talk about why our music might be different from other bands that are working in the same arena, is how our music is not passive music. It’s music that, right off the bat, grips your attention and is always going to be evocative. A Charly Bliss song is always going to feel emotionally potent — whatever the emotion driving the song is, it’s going to be right at the surface. And I feel that way from the moment of the song’s inception to the very beginning. So, as a guitar player, the way I know that my heart is done is as soon as it feels right — if it’s serving the emotional intention of the song.
ROB: Quickly, just from left to right, name your favourite song from Young Enough.
DAN: I would say ‘Young Enough’.
EVA: ‘The Truth’.
SPENCER: ‘Fighting in the Dark’.
SAM: I would have said ‘Young Enough’, but to be different I’ll go with ‘Bleach’.
EVA: Just while we’re on ‘Bleach’, we always joke that Sam is the limerick writer of the band. Like ‘Westermarck’, for example — when he sent me the melody to write lyrics to, I just asked him, “Are you trying to fucking kill me?” And ‘Bleach’ is another song like that. But they’re genius! [Eva turns to Sam] I’m your little sister, and I think that you have a part of yourself that is very much a perfectionist. You express yourself through writing these songs that are so perfectly catchy.
ROB: I’m talking you guys while you’re on tour in the U.K. How are you guys not going insane in the van?
EVA: Oh, it’s been really easy on this tour. We’ve all felt exhausted, which is a small part of it, of course. But the overwhelming feeling of this tour has been the excitement of waking up in a new city every day. Some cities we’ve never been to. We’ve been to Manchester once before but it’s still a dream come true. It just feels like an amazing adventure — we’re really lucky. I mean, we have a tour manager and a front of house person who are just the most magical people. They’re Scottish and hilarious and loving, and I feel like we’re on tour with our parents.
SAM: It’s like we’re travelling babies.
SPENCER: Yeah, they’ll say, “Come on, it’s time to eat now!” and we’re like “Whaaaat?”
EVA: Yeah, I can’t remember being so happy on tour.
ROB: You’ve spent part of this tour in Paris. Eva, your Instagram story had one of those “If I could speak to my fifteen-year-old self” moments. Could you go into that a little more?
EVA: Well, I met Spencer when I was fifteen. And Sam will always be my older brother, so I’ll always think of him as being the coolest person that ever existed. But never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we would end up in a band together, or that we would end up touring world together. And Dan here has been one of my closest friends since I was eleven. I tend towards self-doubt, and it took a long time for me to really commit to trying to learn how to play guitar, or trying to write songs. And I just think that, if I could have been shown a tiny little piece of what my life is like right now, I would just be so thrilled. We’re very ambitious people, we’re competitive with ourselves, and we always want to feel like we’re doing better, which is a wonderful thing. But you can easily lose track of all the wonderful things that are already going on in your life, and I think in moments like that, I can actually pause and say, “Holy fucking shit! We’re in Paris because we wrote music, and people heard it, and wanted us to come and play it for them!”
ROB: You’re on this tour with Big Joanie. Are you guys big fans?
EVA: Yeah, we’re friends with them and they’re really great! I figured it would be really, really fun, and they’re doing so well. They’re crushing it. They opened for Bikini Kill this week. They’re really cool!
ROB: What’s next for you guys once this U.K. leg of the tour is over?
EVA: We do have two weeks off at home, but we’re not going to be able to relax for a very long time.
SAM: Things keep popping up, which is great. You want to be busy around the release of your album. When we get back from Europe and the U.K., we’re immediately on our North American tour. Then Australia. We’ve got some other things, some other announcements — they’re really cool — and somewhere in there we’re hoping to find time to work on our third album.
EVA: And just to say, I have never been so proud. I feel, in so many ways, that this album is a tribute to the four of us, and the time that we spent together, and how close we are. So much of this required all of us to be nervous and uncomfortable and colourful, and to try things that felt scary. None of us could have done this without each other. I feel so lucky to be in a band with three other people who have my back as much as these guys do. Writing with my brother has been really special. I could not be more over the moon excited for people to hear it, I think that’s a really special way to feel. When you first write an album, it’s a little present to yourself. You can’t show it to anyone, it’s a secret and you walk around listening to it, and you keep tweaking it till it’s perfect. But once it’s out, it’s out of your hands.
ROB: Just while you’re in the U.K., are there any places you’re keen to go back to?
[ALL IN UNISON]: Dishoom.
SPENCER: The black lentils are great. The dahl.
DAN: Yeah, the Indian places we go to [in the U.K.] are so good.
SAM: And also, Borough Market. When we were there last, I had the best scotch egg I’ve ever had. Well, the only one I’ve ever had, but still the best.
SPENCER: Just while we’ve been in Manchester today, we had breakfast this morning at this amazing place called Sugar Junction. It was really good.
ROB: So, I know you guys are really big Weezer fans, and since the last time you were in the U.K. things have really changed for them. We’ve had ‘Africa’, then Teal, now Black. What have you made of all that?
SAM: Well, as a Weezer apologist, there are even moments on Raditude that I really like —
SPENCER: Sam is a Hurley stan! I want that in print!
SAM: Oh, it’s just three songs! I was hoping to escape this. ‘Memories’, ‘Ruling Me’, and that song ‘Brave New World’. Uh, yeah. Here’s what I’ll say: I was watching TV a couple of months ago, and I saw this commercial for an American festival. It was like, “Cardi B! Jay Z! Lorde! Weezer! Carly Rae Jepsen!” So, you know what, props to them for staying relevant. It’s not the Weezer I fell in love with twenty years ago, but I liked the ‘Africa’ cover.
EVA: Yeah, I don’t ever want to be a band that just does the same thing over and over again for the rest of our lives. And if this is what they want to do now, more power to them. It doesn’t have to be what I love. When people get so upset about how they sound now, I just think: “Pinkerton and The Blue Album will be on the Internet and on CD forever — they’re not going anywhere.”
SAM: Yeah, you don’t have to listen to The Teal Album or The Black Album. I certainly won’t be. No, wait, strike that from the record! [Laughs]
SPENCER: Well, put that back on the record as me saying that! [Laughs]
EVA: I don’t know, they’re a band that people love to debate and to hate. I loved a lot of Red. I definitely love all of Make Believe. I love Maladroit.
SAM: Can we also get it in print that ‘I’m Your Daddy’ is a good song? Thanks.
ROB: Who else is on your playlists at the moment?
EVA: Sigrid. She’s incredible. And Kim Petras. Lizzo. The 1975.
DAN: Isn’t there a Lizzo song that has the same chord progression as ‘Creep’?
SPENCER: Yeah, I think it’s ‘Jerome’. Also, we all really like Jack Antonoff. He just produced a record for Kevin Abstract, out of Brockhampton.
ROB: And finally, just for fun, are you cat or dog people?
DAN: Dog.
EVA: Cat.
SPENCER: Dog.
SAM: I would say cat, but I just bought a dog. So now I’m a converted dog person.
