Charly Bliss Interview: The Vulnerability of Young Enough
Charly Bliss’ sophomore album ‘Young Enough’ floats through the group’s most intense, jarring lyricism to date. Once again featuring Eva Hendricks’ blasting, yet feminine vocal, the four piece add a new dimension to their artistry. On their second album, the group possess a clearer sense of direction, seeking to make sonically diverse pop music, without being exceedingly overbearing. We talk to lead vocalist Eva Hendricks about the making of ‘Young Enough’, and the emotional gravity of performing live as they head to Australia for Splendour in the Grass and Sideshows.
How’s this period been following the album release and getting ready to embark on a tour? A whirlwind couple of months?
You’re exactly right it’s been a total whirlwind. It’s been really exciting and wonderful. We’re all so proud of this album and it’s felt really awesome and empowering to play this album every night. We’ve had a great time.
Do you think that there was a sense of relief that you had a better understanding of your voice and strengths as a band, compared to how long it took during ‘Guppy’?
Absolutely. We experienced so many growing pains whilst we were making ‘Guppy’. We made the album twice and scrapped it when we weren’t happy with it. So much of that process was figuring out who we are as a band and what feels right for us and true to us.
It felt that by the time we got to making ‘Young Enough’, we had sorted out the big difficult questions. Simultaneously, it was the first time we were working on an album where we didn’t have jobs or weren’t full time students in college. It was the first time ever that any of us had the opportunity to work all day on writing when we were home from tour. That made for a more cohesive album and made us work a lot harder on this album.
How did going full throttle into making an album change your perspective on song-writing and on the world?
I think it made me love song-writing so much more. My relationship with being a song-writer was always very tenuous. I always felt that I came to it too late and that I wasn’t good enough or it was something that every once in a while, a song would magically pop into my head. I was able to explain it to myself through magic, more than through the idea that I was actually good at it.
Having ‘Guppy’ come out forced me to take more credit and believe in myself a bit more. All four of us felt that way. Looking at this as work and something that you can sit down from 8am to 6pm [doing it] and be proud of what you came out of the day with, or feel that you didn’t get it right, I really loved it. Not a lot of people get to do that, and I felt really privileged to have that experience and to also work that hard at it and come out loving it more was really eye-opening for me…
I don’t think there’s any way we could’ve written this album if we weren’t able to focus and dedicate that much time to it because we wrote close to 30 songs and eliminated so many of them. The ones we did pick, we wrote and rewrote, and went back in on the lyrics and melodies. It was a really in-depth process. We had a lot of fun with it though.
The group selected 11 songs from their 30 song catalogue for inclusion on the album.
What was it like to make sure you were choosing the ones with the most important messages?
That part was painful, because when you write a song, it’s so vulnerable to send it to bandmates, sometimes managers and producers. We have a really strong sense of our strengths and weaknesses and what’s working and not working. Of course, sometimes you can recognise that there’s a song you’ve written that’s not serving the ultimate goal of the album. There’s [also] moments where you’re like, ‘oh, but I love it!’ That being said, we’re all able to have a critical eye and know that if something doesn’t make it on the album, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.
From day one, we had a really strong idea of what we wanted this album to be… and which songs were serving that vision, and which weren’t. A song like ‘Capacity’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. We kept trying to play it as a band and it wasn’t working. It sounded really weird and bad and we couldn’t make it work right. We shelved it for a really long time until a month before we went into record. We played it for Joe [Chiccarelli], our producer and he encouraged us to go back in and try again. I’m so glad, because that song in particular, I was like, ‘ugh, those lyrics. Those lyrics need to be on the album’… It’s important to also know when to fight for something and know we can make it better and get it there.
Charly Bliss perceive their sound as pop. In a way, their spin on the genre stands as ‘non-conformist pop’.
Can you talk about how you’ve been able to break away from mainstream, cookie-cutter pop music?
Thank you! Something that we learned when making ‘Guppy’ is that it never works when you try to sound like somebody else. When we were making [‘Guppy’], we fell into the trap of what’s cool in New York right now? What bands are doing well? We should sound like them… Part of making music and making music now in the age of the Internet where everyone is a critic, and everyone can say what they like and don’t like about what you make, is that it’s a lot easier to brush [it] off when people have things to say about your album that might be negative.
[Things] that are painful to read are a lot easier to brush off when you know that you made exactly what you wanted to make and something that was exactly true to the inside of your brain. It feels so personal to the four of us and feel like an album that couldn’t have been made my somebody else. I hear each of us on this album. When you feel that way, you can brush [criticism] off, because we made the album we wanted to make. The moments I feel like we cut corners or tried to sound like another band… and someone has a problem with it, it makes me feel awful. I’m like, ‘oh! I kind of agree with what they’re saying’.
I’ve found that’s the only way you can do it is to make music that feels true to what is exciting to you. It’s absolutely true that we think of ourselves as a pop band… Because we had a stronger handle on who we are as a band, it felt more natural to experiment with different instruments and arrangements and [with] a producer who has worked in the pop world, because we felt strong in the foundation of who we are as a band.
Charly Bliss makes a conscious effort to blend soundscapes. They weave through sharp, bold sounds and mellow and gentle sounds through the album in order to align with the messaging of their lyricism.
What made you decide that you want to deliver a range of emotions and feelings sonically, not just lyrically?
From the very beginning, we wanted to outwrite what we had written on ‘Guppy’. We’re very competitive people and always want to feel like we’re one-upping ourselves and challenging ourselves and growing. Something we noticed in ‘Guppy’, is that it is an album that goes hard the whole time. It’s high octane. Something we were really inspired by was… Lorde on the melodrama tour. It was really incredible to see how a moment in a song like ‘Liability’ was so stripped down and [made] the rest of the set feel bigger… that moment of intimacy and vulnerability.
Same as when [we toured] with Bleachers, we had another experience with that as well. It was important for us to have an album with more diversity and more space on it and [with] a wider range of emotional moments. That’s not what immediately comes to us. What immediately comes to us is [on] ‘Guppy’. That’s our first instinct, like we grew up with Weezer, so [‘Guppy’] sounds like Weezer. It was like, what happens when we write beyond our first instinct? Lyrically, I was inspired by Lorde and hearing Melodrama, which came out around the same time as ‘Guppy’. We were listening to that heavily when we were first starting to write for ‘Young Enough’. That album was so honest lyrically. It was insanely honest, and I felt inspired that [Lorde] wasn’t afraid to say anything that made her look mean, or sad, or strong, weak or angry. She touched on a representation of herself that was very real.
On ‘Guppy’, even though the lyrics were very honest, I had a tendency to get close to saying something really hard to say, then swerving and making fun of myself instead. I wanted to try and write from a place of, ‘if I said exactly what I [felt], what would happen?’ I didn’t feel like a song was done until it felt painful to read the lyrics because it felt too true or open. That was the goal when writing this album.
Did that open your eyes up to the idea that the bigger the risk is, the bigger the satisfaction and weight lifted off your shoulders?
I absolutely feel that way… Writing albums is so funny… My friend [Stefan Babcock], who’s in the band PUP says that you keep making albums because you never feel totally satisfied and got it totally right. I think that is always true. With that said, in terms of the goals we set for this album, I really feel proud of what we achieved. Because it’s a really honest album, it’s really empowering to play these songs every night.
The return we’ve received by opening up and being vulnerable is that they are also very open and vulnerable with us. I feel there is a noticeable difference [in the connection between us and the audience] between the tours we did for ‘Guppy’ and for ‘Young Enough’ because it feels like when we get to songs like ‘The Truth’, ‘Chatroom’, ‘Hurt Me’, or ‘Young Enough’, the audience knows what I’m singing about. They give it back to us.
It’s a huge electric love and energy back to us that feels so supportive. I feel so grateful for that experience. It’s something I never expected to come from this, but it’s been helpful for me. I absolutely think that the harder we worked on this album and the more we pushed ourselves in every sense has created an experience that’s magic.
Do you have any last words about coming to Australia and touring ‘Young Enough’? What can people expect aside from what you’ve mentioned?
Australia is the number one place we’ve always wanted to go. We are so excited, I can’t tell you. We are so thrilled. In terms of the set, something I was nervous about was being so honest about what the lyrics were about. That people might read an interview and go, ‘it’s going to be a bunch of sad music’. But, this album feels so cathartic and celebratory.
The shows really feel that way to me. It’s been wonderful looking out every night and seeing people dancing, jumping and screaming along with all of the words. I think that people coming to our shows in Australia can expect that crying whilst dancing insane relief and dance party… A big connection. We feel so excited and mind-blown that people in Australia have heard our music.
Charly Bliss will be making their way to Australia this July performing at Splendour in the Grass and Sideshows.
Sideshow dates:
Melbourne – Friday 19 July
Sydney – Tuesday 23 July
Tickets available at: https://www.secretsounds.com/tours/charly-bliss-sitg-sideshows-2019