Charly Bliss release a video for “I’m Not Dead,” a highlight from their recently released critically acclaimed new album FOREVER, out now via Lucky Number. FOREVER is full of the band’s biggest, brightest power pop yet, but it’s an evolution, not a departure. FOREVER crams a lifetime of feeling, decades of friendship, and years of craft into a batch of sonically tight but emotionally vast songs that activate the pleasure centers in your brain. The songs shimmer and burst, the way fireworks look like they should sound. Of the record, the band says it“celebrates the big love between the four of us and the life we’ve fought for and built together. The lyrics are head over heels, overflowing with romantic love, friend love, crushes and the hurricanes of feeling that accompany all the massive shifts of growing up. We fell back in love with making music through this record, and you can hear it.”
“I wrote this song at the start of covid when I thought I was going to die and I was sad that I hadn’t partied more, if this was truly the end,” Eva Hendricks explains. Video director, Charly Bliss’ own Dan Shure, says “we thought this song needed a music video. Eva and I have both become huge fans of Murder She Wrote, so this was the perfect chance to make a fun, creative lyric video. We shot this on an iPhone literally one day after we wrapped the Back There Now video (which was also my birthday). We started writing the song over zoom, alongside K.Flay. Over a year later, as the song went through a few different versions, we finally ended up with this soaring fuzzy power pop hit.”
Charly Bliss is kicking off their North American tour in support of FOREVER tonight in Washington, DC. Their energetic and jovial live show, which Pitchfork recently called “a giddy, heart-racing time,” is not to be missed!
Tour Dates:
Sept 5 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
Sept 6 – Cambridge, MA @ Royale
Sept 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sept 9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sept 11 – Toronto, ON @ Adelaide Hall
Sept 12 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Blind Pig
Sept 13 – Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
Sept 14 – Cudahy, WI @ X-Ray Arcade
Sept 17 – St Paul, MN @ Turf Club
Sept 18 – St Louis, MO @ Old Rock House
Sept 20 – Denver, CO @ Marquis Theater
Sept 23 – Portland, OR @ Mission Theater
Sept 24 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile
Sept 26 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club
Sept 29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex
Sept 30 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room
Oct 1 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
Oct 4 – Austin, TX @ Parish
Oct 5 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
Oct 7 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade (Hell)
Oct 8 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Oct 10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
Nov 6 – London, UK @ The Garage (Pitchfork London)
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. Eva 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, Shure, and the two Hendrices (pluralized like “matrix”) 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.
WATCH VIDEOS FOR PREVIOUSLY RELEASED SINGLES
“NINETEEN,” “CALLING YOU OUT,”
“WAITING FOR YOU,” & “BACK THERE NOW”
