There are decisions, and there are decisions. And singer/guitarist Eva Hendricks—of indie power poppers Charly Bliss—has a decision to make.
“I’m getting married in a couple of months, and I don’t know if I can go down the aisle with blue hair,” she says on a Zoom call from down under. Even though “the blue has kind of faded out.” To dye or not to dye?
If you’ve got questions, well, so do we.
First things first: Charly Bliss just dropped a new record, Forever, and it is the catchiest thing you’ll hear this summer. All of the hooks that made Guppy and Young Enough are in effect, but Forever has an added shimmer. What gives here? Production? Experience? More synths?
“I think we were just really on the same page about how we wanted this record to sound,” she said of the band’s third LP. “And a lot of that was synth-based. But there’s also a lot of guitar on this record. In some ways, I feel like it’s like the record we really, went for a lot of big guitar moments.”
Despite Hendricks’s perspective, the synths are the first thing many listeners will notice as they take in the albums one-two opening punch of “Tragic” and “Calling You Out.” And no listeners will sleep on the piano ballad “Nineteen,” the best of its kind since Lady Gaga’s “You and I.”
One thing is beyond dispute. The record is catchy as hell, and feels real happy. A listener might or might not be wrong to assume this reflects Hendricks—and the band’s—mindset during the four years of constructing Forever.
“I think this period of time has been like a really great period for all of us to really be in consistent therapy and figure out the medication we needed.”
Nothing like stability.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve said in prior interviews that you had had this romance in Australia. Then you were working on citizenship. And now, tying the knot. You’ve gradually upped the ante. Are you planning to live there permanently, maybe a dual citizenship?
You know, I try not to think too hard about it, because I think if I do, I’ll go a little bit crazy. What I do know is that I really love being here. It couldn’t be more different from New York, where I was living for 10 years prior. The lifestyle is very, very different, very relaxed. Everyone is so happy and well adjusted. And for now, I’ve been able to kind of manage living sort of a double Hannah Montana life of being here for half the year and then being in America for half the year doing music stuff. And for the most part, it’s been really wonderful. I mean, when I’m here, I spend a lot of time outside. I feel like I’m very healthy and look after myself really well. And then, when I’m in New York, I snap right back into working way too hard and not sleeping.
How do you deal with the weird bugs in Australia? Or is that just an internet thing?
No, it’s real. It’s real. The spiders are enormous. We live right by the beach, and, for the most part, I don’t see the giant huntsman spiders unless I go out and visit a friend who lives more in a kind of farmland or rural setting. And then if you look around, guaranteed pretty much in one corner of the ceiling, there’s going to be a huntsman spider that’s like that big (holds hand wide open). But there was one time I was in my friend’s car, and we were gabbing away. It was nighttime. We park, and the lights go on in her car. And just right next to my head was this giant spider. And we were just screaming!
Work on this record took place after the last touring cycle, a difficult period for the band. You guys started writing in 2020, and now it’s 2024, which doesn’t imply the easiest album birth that I’ve ever heard. You’re not Guns ‘n’ Roses, but it wasn’t quick.
It was a really interesting time. In 2019, Sam (Hendricks, drummer and Eva’s brother) and his wife found out that they were pregnant. We were coming off of about a year of touring pretty much nonstop. And we were on the road for about nine or 10 months out of that year. And we were pretty much planning to do the same in 2020. And then finding out that Sam and his wife will be having a baby, we were kind of like, “Oh, okay, this will force a break for all of us. We’ll have to take some time off.” And it’s funny to think now, because Sam’s wife was due in February. We were thinking, “Okay, we’ll take like February, March, April off, and then we’ll be back for the summer.” We had no way to what was coming next. And it was right around that time that I had just met this guy in Australia, when we were on tour. And I thought, you know, we’re kind of dating long distance. I need to go to Australia, spend a significant amount of time with this person, and see if this is real. And so, I thought, I’ll go to Australia for six weeks. And that will really give me a good sense of what is going on here. And I arrived in Australia on March 3, 2020.
Gosh, was there anything going on in the world?
No, nothing. Nothing.
Not for a couple of weeks.
Actually, this is hilarious. I remember being in LAX right before my flight to Sydney. And I called Callum, who’s now my fiancé. And I was like, “what do you think is about to happen? Because it feels like something really big is about to happen.” He was kind of like “no, no, no, it’s gonna be fine.” Callum works in films. At the time, he was working on the Elvis film. By the time I had landed, he was like, “I shook hands with Tom Hanks yesterday. And today, Tom Hanks has covid.” It truly felt like in the span of my flight, it was “oh, crap, the world is ending.”
That’s a great COVID origin story. Tom Hanks was the Typhoid Mary of COVID celebrities.
(Laughs). I ended up spending a year and a half here. And I got my visa. I would have never had time to really do that with our touring schedule at any other time in my life. It kind of just all fell into place. And now I’m pretty close to being a citizen. I’m a permanent resident. But we were all over the place. Sam in baby world, and me here in Australia. And a lot was up in the air for a long time. And we did take a long time writing this record, but, honestly, I think it was for the best. I think about things that worked about Guppy, another record we took a long time writing. I know that so much in our culture is focused on turning things around quickly. I would be lying if I said there weren’t many times where I was miserable, thinking we’re never gonna get to release another album, or that Forever was never finished. I think the songs really benefited from it. I think the album really benefited from it. I think our ability to enjoy the album and making the album was enriched by us being able to spend time making it and not feel like there was this looming deadline.
Speaking of taking time to develop things, let’s talk about “Nineteen.” The arrangement is unusual. There’s no repeated lyrics for the choruses. You’ve got an outro that is a different melody. At first, it seemed like the sax solo was in a random spot. It wasn’t until a couple of more listens that the structure was clear. How did that song happen? It’s an ambitious arrangement for what is, essentially, a pop ballad.
I can’t take credit. I wrote the lyrics for that song. But Sam arranged that song and wrote the melodies. And I can say that—of all the songs on the record—that one is exactly how he envisioned it. He is so fascinating to me in terms of what melodies come out of his mind. We always make a joke that Sam will be like “I just thought of this melody,” and the melody will essentially sound like a limerick. And I’ll listen, trying to follow it, trying to write lyrics to it, being like, “how can I possibly fit the syllables exactly to correspond to what he’s dreamt up?” But I think that’s what makes him such an incredible songwriter, is he does write these songs that it takes you a few times to listen to before you’re like “okay, this is where this song is going to go next. I can kind of anticipate it.” They’re surprising and keep you really on your toes throughout the whole arrangement. Particularly that song. I remember having a few moments of “will this land with people?” for exactly the reasons you just said. No repeated lyrics. It’s almost an emotional word vomit. But I think the two things together, the arrangement and the way the lyrics work, kind of ended up serving each other really well.
“Nineteen” is not quite at the halfway point of the album, but it still feels like the emotional centerpiece of the record. And a surprising choice for the first single. It telegraphed the choice that Forever is a departure from the other two records.
I think we feel really different. In some ways, when you’re in a typical every two years album cycle, it doesn’t really feel like you change in the time between records. Doing interviews for this album has been so surreal, because it’s been a moment to look back on how much has changed over the last five years. We’re all in a very different place than we were the last time we released music. Sam is a father, I’m getting married. We are older. I think there’s something about touring and nonstop touring and nonstop releasing music that sort of forces you into arrested development. I think I grew up a lot over the last five years, not always being on tour and being in one place for like a significant amount of time. I was living in New York for the majority of my 20s, but I was touring so much that it was really hard to have a consistent group of friends. We’d be home for two weeks at a time and then go back on tour. Now I own a car for the first time since I was a teenager. I have a group of friends for the first time since I was a teenager. Like we’re all just in a much healthier place. And I do think you can hear it on the album. And if I had to guess, I do think that’s kind of what separates this record from the other two. And I think all of those things led to us feeling freer on this album. It felt like making Guppy again in the sense that we’re not insisting that it be anything. It’s just, we’re insisting that it be fun and that we enjoy the process of making it.
I assume your lyrics are fairly autobiographical? Is that anxiety-inducing to put yourself out there like that?
The lyrics are very autobiographical. I think it would be harder for me to not put myself out there. Whether it’s music or relationships or my life, the best outcomes I have found are from being as honest as I can possibly be. It’s vulnerable no matter how you put yourself out there. And you will get negative feedback no matter what you say or how you do it. The only thing I’ve found that works is feeling like “well, at least I put the most authentic version of myself out into the world.” I can stand behind whatever criticisms or misunderstandings, because that is exactly who I am. At the end of the day, I can stand behind that person.
