New Track: Charly Bliss Wants To Return The Summer Anthem to Pop Rock With 'Bleach'
Tristan Young @talltristan
Sometimes it’s not an experimental intersection of multiple increasingly abstract and arbitrary genre signifiers. Sometimes it’s as simple as Charly Bliss, and that’s just great. Take the synth pop stylings of Chvrches and swap the synth for rock and you’re pretty much on target here. Charly Bliss’ new record Young Enough is out and it’s going to be required summer listening. Their track ‘Bleach’ is a euphoria drenched spike of optimism and energy, at least in terms of tone and melody. Old school electric organs are generously spread over an uptempo percussive march, but it’s Eva Hendrick’s vocals that are the real stand out. Her voice is irresistibly phonogenic, with infectious zeal and enthusiasm. It’s not just that her vocals are ingrained with nostalgically primed innocence and sweetness, but how she can augment them through emotive inflections. She sings, “Loud with you I’m in love with your way, I always wanted my sisters face”; every word she offers there proceeds with an upward cadence, except the last one that transitions into surprisingly sorrowful. She keeps this up ensuring every verse is one addictive hook after the other. The way she chokes up and looses her stability ever so briefly when she cries, “I’m fucking joy and I hemorrhage light”, is wonderful. At that moment the glossy veneer is briefly pulled back for something raw and vulnerable, it’s strikingly empathetic. The chorus is even more rewarding as Hendricks strings together lines in gorgeously melodic long form compositions. The sequence, “sick with worry, plagued by fear, it took so long to say I know I wasn’t happy here or there”, is performed through a single perfectly syncopated breath. It approaches Art Angeles era Grimes level of perfect pop as it reaches its crescendos. While the subject matter seems to be fairly standard renditions of loss and growth, the final line is delightfully poetic, “now every day I thank the moon and stars that I was born a girl”. For a while it seemed like Charly Bliss couldn’t articulate if they wanted to be a rock band or a pop group. With tracks like ‘Bleach’ it’s apparent they should be trusted to do their own thing and stop worrying about the labels.