Notes on Charly Bliss
Like some other note-based pieces I’ve put together, this wasn’t published anywhere, I just fancied writing about Charly Bliss and the role they unexpectedly played in my life. It’s not been edited or moderated much, so it feels a little like stream of consciousness. It’s just a personal account of how I came to love this band and how they helped me fall in love with someone else.
This has been a long time coming, even if I haven’t always known. I probably should have written about Charly Bliss months before now, perhaps even more than a year ago, such is their influence on me. Actually, there’s no “probably” or “perhaps” about it: what follows is long overdue.
In March of 2017, my girlfriend and best friend of almost four years sat me down and told me it was over. The little problems we’d been happily ignoring could no longer be contained, and they finally reared their heads in ways we didn’t know how to solve. It was time for us to call it quits. I was never capable of making that final call because I’m a coward when it comes to realising I’m better off alone, and I honestly, genuinely believed we were both happy. We weren’t, though, not really, and thankfully she had the strength to realise our futures were best spent apart from each other. She was brave enough to make such a huge decision. I’ve never chosen to end a relationship — that whole “coward” thing — but I imagine reaching that conclusion is incomprehensibly torturous. When you’re the biggest part of somebody’s life you become something more than just their partner. You become a family fixture with profound and meaningful connections to people you never thought you would. So when you plan to leave somebody’s life you also agree to sever all ties with people you’ve come to know through them, cutting off connections you’ve formed with them and relegating experiences you’ve shared with them. You leave the family.
Defining and risky as it was for her, she made the right call for us both.
But at the time, how was I supposed to know? My world had just been turned upside down in the space of about thirty minutes. I was suddenly denied access to almost four years of intensely personal memories I’d stored, committed and intense feelings I’d experienced, defining periods of my life that I’d lived through, and unforgettable connections I’d formed, all with her by my side. The only person capable of helping me through something as emotionally traumatic as this break-up had just walked out on me, taking almost everything with her. So, I completely lost direction. For a full month my days consisted of little more than waking up in the afternoon, sitting alone in my flat until the sun went down again, and then going to bed in the early hours of the morning to rinse and repeat. I attempted and achieved precisely nothing in this time.
A more enlightened version of myself might have referred to this little routine as “post break-up self-care”, but truthfully I was inches from becoming a waster. I needed to re-calibrate and reorient myself quickly. I had no university lectures to attend anymore, I had no job to start, I had nothing to give me purpose or much of a reason to rise in the morning. My circadian rhythms were the most neglected they’d ever been. I’d spend hours of every Friday on dating apps only to then delete them all before I went to sleep. On Saturdays I’d try to reconnect with people who had long since drifted out of my life for good reason. And then, almost every Sunday evening, each weekend would inevitably close with me walking to nowhere in particular, typing out a pathetic progress update to my girlfriend, informing her that I was coming round to an understanding of her decision, before pressing send. Typing it all out, that’s the routine of a depressed person in denial, isn’t it?
I’d dug myself into a rut by the beginning of April. I suppose I should give myself credit at least for recognising that I had to snap out of it.
I’m not sure why it happens, but break-ups do something strangely specific to me — it’s hard to explain the psychology and science behind it. Emotions are unusual, and given my struggles with anxiety over the years it’s safe to say that mine behave more unusually than most peoples’ at the best of times. But this was a whole new level of strange for them. For instance, my brain’s reaction to realising I was stuck in the doldrums was to force myself to act out in ways so oddly specific that I’m still trying to locate their origins. I still went through the regular methods: I bought myself an entirely new wardrobe, a new haircut, an expensive record player… Three cheers for retail therapy. But beyond that, I’m not sure why I chose to pick up just about every other new habit that I did. First, I signed out of all dating apps for precisely ten weeks (Why ten? That’s such an arbitrary number!). Then I started watching new TV shows but only before I went to sleep (Why not during the day like everyone else?). And I started re-reading parts of my dissertation over and over again, even when certain sections of it didn’t require any further editing. The most unusual coping mechanism I developed, however, was timing how long I took to get ready of a morning. Not by using a stopwatch, or any other conventional timekeeping apparatus, but by listening to music in the shower through my phone’s tinny, shitty little speaker.
Enter Charly Bliss.
I wish I could find the conversation my friend and I were having when he suddenly sent, out of the blue, words to the effect of: “Oh, I meant to say earlier, you might get a kick out of that new Charly Bliss record”. The record in question is the band’s debut album Guppy, and that conversation is a personal landmark. Anybody reading this will probably know of my serious weakness for power pop — you know, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, Big Star, Cheap Trick, Paramore, Motion City Soundtrack, among others — and this particular friend knew that fact very well. I’m a sucker for fuzzed up power chords laid underneath direct melodies (or, in the case of power pop’s earliest form, jangly open major chords and particularly flowery melodies). What can I say? I’m into some pretty extreme and bizarre styles of music, but what I always come back to are big pop choruses, clear messages, and simple structures. There’s no particular hymn sheet that every power pop acts sings from, but Guppy adheres to the unwritten formula so precisely that it immediately nudged all my weak spots before setting out to bury itself underneath them. One touch, that’s all it took.
Before long I was building my morning routine around Guppy. I’d press play on ‘Percolator’ and brush my teeth until it was over. I’d hop in the shower while ‘Westermarck’ and ‘Glitter’ sang out. I’d dry myself off to the sounds of ‘Black Hole’ and ‘Scare U’, and if my hair was being particularly stubborn I’d reach ‘Ruby’ on some morning. I’d choose my clothes and put them on as ‘DQ’, ‘Gatorade’, and ‘Totalizer’ blasted their way towards the album’s end, and by the time I’d made my breakfast ‘Julia’ had faded out, ready for me to start the album all over again while I ate. I’ve gone back through my last.fm scrobbling history to find out just how often I listened to Guppy during the spring of 2017. The answer, without boring you by listing endless reams of data, is a lot. For those who want the figures: on average, I listened to track #2, ‘Westermarck’, at least once a day for more than a month between April 29 and June 9 of 2017. I mean, I’m sure I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and dressed myself on at least 99% of the days during that period, so that number seems expected, but the message to take away is that I’d become deeply, personally attached to this album in such a short space of time.
And, honestly, how could I not? As it turns out, singer Eva Hendricks’ lyrics are what eventually reoriented and re-calibrated my feelings during a time of emotional chaos. I’ve found over the years that I’m often at my happiest when I can use songwriting as a productive method of therapy — when I can “put my feelings on the page”, as it were. I hadn’t written music meaningfully in months, and I hadn’t wanted to look at my guitar in the immediate aftermath of the break-up, but hearing Charly Bliss combine such accessible, instantly memorable melodies with diary-entry lyrics and subtle songwriting complexities that revealed themselves further with repeated listens, it was impossible to stay in that particular funk. The writing sessions I immediately embarked on would eventually create Moon, my third album as Colourful Sevens. If you were to listen to Guppy and immediately jump into Moon I think you’d see the influence pretty clearly. I was recently interviewed by the wonderful folks at Audioxide about this little musical moment I shared with Eva, Sam, Spencer, and Dan, and my answer further solidified Guppy’s impact on how I approached songwriting and how I reckoned with my situation at the time: “[While] writing Moon I was falling deeply in love with Charly Bliss’ debut, Guppy. So much of Eva Hendricks’ lyrical content is confessional, sometimes embarrassingly so, and I was obsessed with capturing that myself. Not just singing about how the break-up had hurt me, but how my attempts to reckon with it had given me thoughts I’d be embarrassed to admit.”
My friend was right: I did get a kick out of them. Not just a kick in terms of them prodding my weakness for power pop, but a kick up the arse to reignite my social life and add structure to the rest of it. Once Guppy had embedded itself, I didn’t feel so alone. I left the doldrums. In truth, being so excited to wake up and listen to that album during my morning routine was everything my system required to restore some balance and purpose I’d been lacking for far too long. I was successfully reoriented and re-calibrated by it. Even without everything that came next, I’d still owe a significant amount of personal progress to Charly Bliss and their music. I thought that after years of listening to so much music that I’d lost the ability to be surprised, to really be taken somewhere and feel like a kid again, and that my days of truly falling in love with a band were over. More fool me.
But there was a next — an entire second act to this story — because Charly Bliss and Guppy wouldn’t realise their true significance until the September of that year.
By the autumn of 2017 I’d been dating a wonderful girl for four months. After that ten week period of abstinence from all things Tinder, I rejoined in May and matched with her. We spoke for a few days before arranging to meet up, and that first date became a second, which became a third. After the third date she briefly moved home for the summer, at which point we agreed to keep in touch to see how we felt when she came back up north in September. We spoke every day while she was back home, even pausing her time at home to visit me for a few days. When summer ended she came back up north, and I had a spare ticket to a Charly Bliss gig which I’d learnt of only a few days prior. On our first date I’d broken the ice by purchasing two albums for her: Big Star’s #1 Record and The Cars’ self-titled debut, and as far as I was aware she’d taken an interest in both since then, so I tried my chances and invited her. She had five days to listen to Guppy, the band’s Soft Serve EP, and any singles which hadn’t made it onto either release. Her only previous concert experience back then had been Ed Sheeran’s show at Manchester Arena, with 14,000 people, and here I was dragging her to a small, sweaty gig at the Eagle Inn pub in Salford — capacity of 80. I’m not sure what my own first small show was but at least I’d become accustomed to Academy-sized shows over the years. The jump from arena concerts to pub gigs is an extreme one to make. Nevertheless, she accepted my offer, set about researching Charly Bliss, and came along.
I’d been struggling with long-term health issues for a while, so this was to be my first proper concert in nearly three years.
Looking back over our time together, my girlfriend and I have since recognised that Charly Bliss played to us both the night we fell in love, even if we didn’t want to admit it to ourselves at the time. The show itself was obviously excellent, if deafeningly loud to the point where the volume aggravated an ear infection I had and left me feeling slightly dizzy, but it wasn’t until afterwards that the evening became a truly special one. We met the band, yes, and they were wonderful to be in the presence of. We told them all about everything you’ve read up there — the morning routine I’d built around their music, the fact that my girlfriend had only five days to prepare for the show but still came anyway — but it was afterwards, once we’d gone back to my flat, that everything suddenly sunk in. A girl I’d dated a few times had just indulged me for three hours by going to see a band she hadn’t heard of just over a week ago. God fucking dammit, I was in love with her. I remember us both sitting in complete silence with midnight approaching, TV off, one light on, fridge-freezer humming quietly over there, my internal monologue arguing with itself over what the hell I was going to say next. Those of you who’ve said those three words to someone will know how it feels to experience the bizarre phenomenon I’m about to describe. You know when you’re maybe two to three months into a relationship, and silences start appearing when you’re alone with the other person? You realise during those silences that you no longer feel compelled to desperately say something, anything, in an attempt to keep things interesting — you begin to trust that your presence alone is enough to maintain their affection. But then the silences give you time to think, and the only thought on your mind is “Should I fill the silence by saying the three words?” I didn’t say anything.
I was having those thoughts for more than a month after that night, before we eventually (and inevitably) declared exclusivity. A month after the Charly Bliss show, on October 24th, 2017, I surrendered to the feelings I’d had for quite a while, and there we were.
On September 19th, 2018, a year to the day that Charly Bliss had played the Eagle Inn, they released their non-album single, ‘Heaven’. In a fit of excitement, brought on by the realisation that the first anniversary of the night I first realised I’d fallen in love with my girlfriend was now marked by new material from the band we’d seen that evening, I contacted Eva over social media:
September 19: “This might seem strange, I don’t know if you’ll remember me. I was at your Manchester, UK show, which was a year ago today so Facebook tells me. That night I was there with a friend of mine, who you also met. She’d been listening to you for about a week before the show because I’d asked her on a date! Anyway, because it’s been a year since that night and because ‘Heaven’ came out today, I just thought I’d tell you that the show at the Eagle really confirmed my feelings for her. And hers for me. Next month we’re going to be celebrating a year together. So thank you, and thanks to the rest of the band for everything really.”
I wasn’t expecting a response, exactly. I think I just wanted to let them know how I felt in that moment on that particular day. People in bands are never not busy. Regardless, I received one:
September 20: “This is so cool! I absolutely remember both of you and I’m so happy to hear that you’re still together, and that we were part of it in some teeny tiny way! Congratulations on your anniversary! I hope we get to reunite some time soon!”
As you’ve seen from the photograph above, we did reunite. Twice. The first took place within the walls of Night People, a Manchester venue, on the afternoon of May 9th, 2019. I’d arranged an interview with the band for a magazine I wrote for at the time (a magazine which will remain unnamed due to complications that arose at a later date and nearly stopped the interview from ever being published). So many wonderful milestones had been reached by my girlfriend and I since we saw them at the Eagle, and being able to update the band on how I’d eventually given in to my feelings a month after that show was such a special moment. Being able to tell them about the conversation we’d shared once we realised that Eva had (deliberately) addressed a message to us both when signing my Guppy LP in an attempt to play matchmaker… Eva simply turned to my girlfriend with a wink in her eye and quipped, “You think I didn’t do that on purpose?” before adding that “It always takes boys a little longer anyway(!)” At Night People, they played an ecstatic and irrepressible set ahead of the release of the second album, Young Enough. Unable to come down from the high of such a special afternoon, we immediately sorted accommodation and travel in London so that we could reunite for a second time by catching their signing show at Rough Trade East, Brick Lane (photo above).
There’s little more left to say, except to express my personal gratitude to Charly Bliss. I bet you’re all relieved considering we’re beyond 3,000 words at this point. They pulled me out of a lull, gave me a reason to meet somebody else, strengthened my connection with that person, and then gave us both something special to share that was unique to our relationship. My life is better for having Charly Bliss in it, and regardless of what their future looks like, the mark they’ve already made on the world can now never be taken away. ❤
