Without naming names, a lot of the biggest names in pop and indie seem afraid to have fun these days. That’s what makes Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter (and on the indie side, Jeff Rosenstock and The Linda Lindas) such a breath of fresh air — they’re not afraid to call out people for pretending to be “too cool” to let loose, jump around, and dance.
Charly Bliss falls into this let’s-have-fun camp, too.
On the band’s first new album in five years, Forever, the quartet — singer Eva Hendricks, drummer Sam Hendricks, lead guitarist Spencer Fox, and bassist Dan Shure — have honed their balance of bubbly pop hooks and crunchy guitar riffs, and they’re having a blast. You will, too. It’s an album meant to be enjoyed among friends or fellows fans, possibly on the Forever And Ever tour.
I recently spoke to Eva Hendricks about the international backstory to making Forever, her feelings on the band’s debut album, and Charly Bliss’ very entertaining Twitter account. Seriously, give it a follow.
I’m asking this as a fan of the band first and a journalist second: where the heck has Charly Bliss been for the past five years?
That is a great question. So much has changed for us in the last five years. Putting this record out has been so wild because it forces you to look at your life and these very specific chunks, like where was I when we were making Guppy? Where was I when we were making Young Enough? And for this album, there’s never been a more intense period of change in my life.
I moved to Australia. Sam became a dad twice over, and so much has just changed for the four of us. It’s really wild. So, yeah, I guess a lot of what transpired was kind of pandemic related. When I went to Australia, I thought I was going there for six weeks. I had just fallen in love with someone who lives there. And right after Sam and his wife had their daughter, I thought, “Well, we can’t be touring for the next six weeks.” It’s so funny we thought that was all at the time. But, yeah, I was like, cool, I’ll go work on the album and write a lot over in Australia and test out this new relationship and see what it is. I left Los Angeles on March 3, 2020, and ended up not leaving Australia for a year and a half. I became like an Australian citizen in that time. We wrote so much of the album over Zoom and figured out a way to make it work while we were apart.
So yeah, that’s where we’ve been.
What does the album title mean to you?
I think when you’re in a period of so much change, it forces you to look at your life and see what are the permanent things. In the period of being in Charly Bliss, I’ve been through so many different romantic relationships and apartments and lifestyle changes, and, you know, tent poles of who I thought I was. This album is so much about reflecting on all of that and realizing that even through all of these shifting external factors, the one thing that never changes, that never goes away, is Charly Bliss. That is the “Forever” of my life.
As much as I do think this is a romantic record, I also think it’s a very friendship-driven record. Me being in Australia and away from my bandmates made me just ache to be back with them. On the song “Waiting For You,” so much of that is about watching footage of us on stage from before the pandemic and realizing, “Oh my god, my dreams came true, and I totally missed it.” I was so stuck thinking about how tired I was or how stressed I was, or is the album doing well or are there enough people at our shows. It’s so possible to focus on all of that and miss what is really happening around you, which is like my greatest dreams for myself, for my friends, for my brother, like it happened. And it’s continuing to happen, like we get to tour the world together and release music together and that is what matters most.
What were some of the challenges — or possibly advantages — of the songwriting process happening virtually?
It was so much fun. I never would have predicted that it would have worked for us, but it really did. I think there’s a lot of pressure trying to be in the same room as people and write a song and work on things. I think I really benefit from being able to go really internal and work something out before I’m ready to let other people hear and react to it. So being able to kind of say, “OK, I’m going to go in the other room for a second and work on something,” or, “I’m going to mute myself for a couple minutes.” And the time zone difference was actually really helpful. Keep in mind, Sam was a new dad through a lot of writing this album, so the fact that my morning was his nighttime was incredibly advantageous to us. Morning, noon, and night kind of ceased to mean anything, because it was like someone is probably always awake in Charly Bliss, so we could work on something.
Then while someone was sleeping, I would work on recording vocals, and then I would send it over to the guys, and then while I was sleeping, they would work on the track. It kind of became this never-ending working period for us. Instead of being like, “OK, we have the practice space for three hours, we have to figure out what’s going on with the song in that time slot.” It felt very seamless and because we didn’t have restaurant jobs or whatever, we were kind of constantly immersed in the process of writing this album. And that was really wonderful for us.
To my ears, this album feels like a mix of the rock-focused Guppy and the more pop-leaning Young Enough. “How Do You Do It,” in particular, reminds me a bit of E•MO•TION-era Carly Rae Jepsen, and then it goes to the fuzzed-out “I Don’t Know Anything.” Did you go into the studio with a sound you were looking for?
It was more of a feeling. There was something about making Guppy that was so special because we didn’t think anyone was going to hear it. I mean, we knew our friends and our parents would hear it and that was about it, and I think there was this sense of no one’s watching. Whereas on Young Enough, we felt overwhelmed by the sense of: people are watching. It was such a condensed turnaround of like, OK, while we’re on tour, every time we’re home, we have to be writing, and then we have to get into the studio, and we have to turn this around as quickly as possible. Whereas, on Forever, we were able to re-find that feeling of no one’s watching. It was so important to us to feel playful in the studio, to feel really creative and free, and return to that feeling that we had captured on Guppy. That was exactly what we wanted to make. Instead of like, what do we think people are hoping for from us?
The truth is, we’ve always loved both of those things. We’ve always loved both very sleek pop and really crunchy guitar music, and I think the bands that have been our touchstones for the longest have also kind of done that as well, like played between those worlds. I’m thinking of Weezer and even a band like Haim, and now Olivia Rodrigo is working in that world, and that’s so exciting to us. We love it. I think it was mostly about, how do we make this album? This distillation of what our collective brains sound like, and less about genre.
One thing I like hearing about from bands and artists is putting together setlists for a tour. When you were recording the album, did the thought ever go through your head of like, “This would be a really good opener”?
Being in a band is fascinating because you are in so many different head spaces while you’re creating something. It’s like, the writing period feels so different than the recording period, which feels so different than the planning a live show period. And then there’s this whole part of your job where you need to be like, how do we market this? How do we create the album artwork and the merch and whatever? You are using so many different parts of your brain to make an album from start to finish. And then there are these moments where you’re in this studio and you finally hear something coming together, and you have this realization of, “Oh my god, we’re going to play these songs in front of people at some point.” You do kind of have this moment of, like, “It’s the perfect opener. We’ve been playing ‘Percolator’ as the opener for like 10 years, we finally wrote a song that’s gonna be as effective as an opener.” It’s so exciting, but I also think it can be a little bit dangerous, right? We’ve always believed that you have to make the songs the best they can possibly be, and then figure out how you’re going to manage to play them live later, and not let your imagination be restrained. I think some of our most creative and exciting live show editions have come from us being forced to figure it out.
You mentioned “Percolator.” Do you still feel personally attached to the songs on Guppy, or is there a little bit of an emotional distance?
Oh my God. I don’t know why. I just got choked up when you said that.
I’m sorry!
No no, that makes me happy. A good way. When we were making Young Enough, I was like, “I’m so sick of those songs. I’m so sick of everything on Guppy. I don’t feel it all attached to them.” But now I’m in a place in my life where I’m happier than I’ve been in a really, really long time. I kind of feel so much closer to those songs than I did maybe even five years ago, because I remember what that felt like. I feel closer to that unselfconscious, free person who made that album than I do the terrified person who made Young Enough. And that is a really wonderful feeling.
Here’s something I’ve wondered for years: who runs the band’s Twitter account?
Spencer [laughs]. I guess sometimes people give me credit for the jokes that he makes on Twitter, and I don’t deserve it at all. He has such a unique brand. He’s the best, he’s hilarious.
So he’s probably the one who is tired of being tagged in every photo of three guys and one blonde lady.
He’s definitely not sick of it. I think he loves it. It’s so fun. With Spencer, however funny you think he might be from Twitter, he is even funnier in real life to spend your life with. He is by far the funniest person I’ve ever known in my life.
Forever is out 8/16 via Lucky Number Music. Find more information here.