Recording an excellent debut album is mostly a blessing, of course. But there’s some curse involved, too, in that you have to figure out how to follow it up. That’s not easy to do. Usually, it means refusing to stagnate, lest you be labeled a one-trick pony. So you must try to record a set of songs that showcase some artistic growth and aesthetic ambition, but at the same time, you don’t want to stray too far from what worked so well the first time out. On their second album Young Enough, Charly Bliss navigates these various pressures and pitfalls without overthinking them. The hotly tipped New York City combo broke through nationally in 2017 on the strength of its debut album Guppy, a perfect—yeah, I said it—10-track blast of sweetly serrated pop-rock supercharged with punky energy and plentiful hooks. Two years later, Young Enough introduces new moods and textures without tamping down the band’s irrepressible likeability. There is unquestionably a centerpiece song on Young Enough, and that’s the title track, which clocks in at 5 minutes and 20 seconds long—an epic by this band’s standards. It’s time well-spent: slow-burning, dynamic, emotionally resonant and representative of Charly Bliss in 2019. Here, you can hear how the synthetic sounds better contextualize Hendricks’ desperate words by drawing out their meaning and feeling rather than running roughshod over them like Guppy’s rollicking arrangements. In doing so, they also open up a promising path forward for the band. That sophomore album challenge? Charly Bliss have nailed it.
Charly Bliss release their sophomore album, Young Enough, on May 10th, and they’ve shared a second new single from it, “Hard to Believe.” It’s a little more guitar-oriented than synthy first single “Capacity,” and Eva Hendricks says, “Sam wrote the guitar riff very early on in the writing process of Young Enough and we’ve always been obsessed with playing it because it’s so insanely catchy.” She also says the song is “about being addicted to a bad relationship, and the endless cycle of trying and failing to end one.”
Eva is the only woman of Charly Bliss’ power pop Brooklyn-hailing foursome, and her three bandmates’ male voices swirl flatteringly around her own in earworm harmonies on their second full-length, Young Enough. The title track tells a story of failed teen romance, with the resounding chorus “We’re young enough / To believe it should hurt this much,” ten words managing to convey both the masochism of starry-eyed youthful interactions and the age-earned knowledge that love shouldn’t be so painful. This record is one about growing up, detailing how expectations change and evolve as we experience disappointment and betrayal and heartbreak.
Charly Bliss second album released 10th may 2019
The Fat Angel Sings 