Interview: Charly Bliss Are Ready to Fall Back in Love with Music at the Royale
Life itself has a way of regularly bringing about a series of changes. This can include moving to an entirely different location, falling in love & getting married and welcoming the birth of a child. These are all dramatic and transformative events, but they can also make for some great music. This is the fuel behind Forever, the third full-length album from the Brooklyn power pop act Charly Bliss that came out on August 16 via the London based entity Lucky Number Music. As part of their “Forever and Ever Tour” in support of the release, the quartet of vocalist & guitarist Eva Hendricks, her brother Sam on drums, guitarist Spencer Fox and Dan Shure on bass are going to be performing at the Royale on 279 Tremont Street in the heart of Boston’s Theater District on September 6.
Indie pop artist Raffaella is going to be opening things up at 7pm, and I had a talk with Eva and Sam ahead of the show about the making of the new album, looking forward to coming back to Boston and a few other things.
What was the experience like making Forever? Was there anything done remotely due to COVID or was it all done in person?
Eva Hendricks: It was mostly remotely. For the recording process, we were all together, but for the writing process, we did that remotely. I was living in Australia at the time while Sam, Spencer and Dan were all in New York. We wrote most of the record over Zoom, which ended up being a really positive thing. We were coming off a long stretch of touring and spending a ton of time together while kind of finding a new way to write with each other was really refreshing and exactly what we needed.
Sam Hendricks: We recorded everything together in Minneapolis at a studio owned by Jake Luppen from Hippo Campus, which is the exact opposite from being apart. It was a very small room that we were all in 24/7 together, but the writing process was 100% remote.
Eva, what made you want to go down to Australia and live on the other side of the world? Was it on a whim or was it a personal thing?
EH: I fell in love with someone while we were on tour in Australia in 2019. Then we were kind of doing long distance for the rest of that year and in 2020, Sam and his wife were due to have their first child, so there was a natural mini break from touring. I then went down to Australia for six weeks to really test out this relationship and see if it’s for real. Then while that happened, I thought I was only going to be down there for six weeks but then the pandemic changed everything. There were lockdowns and Australia was really, really strict with their ordinances so two days into the trip, I had to decide whether I was going to stay there or go back to America.
At the time, I couldn’t imagine how long I was going to be stuck over there, but I decided to ride it out and I ended up being in Australia for a year and a half. I became a citizen and I’m getting married in a couple weeks to this person, so it all worked out and it was a very life-changing time.
Congratulations. Oftentimes when it comes to a band’s first three albums, the third release often represents the reaching of a creative apex while hinting towards where the direction the music will be going in the future. Do you both feel this way about Forever or do you feel differently about it?
SH: Yeah, I feel like that is accurate for this album. Our first album Guppy was just us as a band with two guitars, bass and drums in a small practice room. There are some synths on the record, but they’re very minimal and that’s what we were listening to at the time and that’s what we liked to play at the time. Then I think Young Enough was very much a transitional record where we wanted to experiment more with production, but we were afraid to fully dive in because it was so new. I feel like with this record, we had zero inhibition, and we felt like we knew exactly what we wanted to do.
EH: We wanted to make it big, poppy, catchy and as undeniable as possible.
SH: If there was an idea for something we had never done before, we would just roll with it. We never had any palm muted guitars before, which was a big step for Spencer, and of course all the keys and stuff like that. This is pretty accurate for what want to do moving forward, and honestly, we want to take it even further while not being limited by any sort of genre or anything like that.
I think that’s a good outlook to have for the future. What are your thoughts on coming back to perform in Boston at the Royale? I know you’re based in Brooklyn and Boston isn’t that far from there, but Boston is also a lot different than Brooklyn.
EH: We love Boston, and the Royale is one of our favorite venues of all time. It’s such a treat and a privilege to be able to play there and were so, so thrilled to get to return there. We haven’t been back to Boston in a long time, so it’s going to feel really good to get to play there again.
SH: Boston has always been amazing to us. I feel like it was one of the first cities outside of New York where we really built a strong following of hardcore fans that are still here today. Every time I go to Boston, it does feel like a bit of a homecoming and it’s great.
Boston is an excellent city, and they have a fantastic music scene there too. It’s been said that Charly Bliss fell back in love with making music during the making of Forever, so is that what you both hope comes across when people give it a listen?
EH: I think that definitely comes through in this album. Lyrically, it’s all there. Our song “Waiting for You” is a love song to my bandmates that I wrote, and I also think that just in the way the record sounds, there’s so much joy. The record to me sounds like one huge relief, we were so thrilled to be back in the same room with each other and I think you can hear it all over the album. I want people to share in that with us at our shows and I’ve always thought our shows have felt like a huge celebration. Especially for our fans who have been with us for a long time, and they were waiting for a long time for this album to come out, we’re trying to create a celebration that we’re all sharing in, and I can’t wait to experience that.
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