-=- SHGZ -=- * Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal * ARTIST..: Charly Bliss ALBUM...: Guppy GENRE...: Indie STYLE...: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Pop Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Bubblegum, Grunge YEAR....: 2017 LABEL...: Barsuk ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0 BITRATE.: 274 kbps avg QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo SOURCE..: CD TRACKS..: 10 SIZE....: 58.20 MB URL..: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charly_Bliss - TRACKLIST 1 Percolator 2:46 2 Westermarck 3:12 3 Glitter 3:14 4 Black Hole 3:02 5 Scare U 2:25 6 Ruby 2:11 7 DQ 3:19 8 Gatorade 2:19 9 Totalizer 2:33 10 Julia 4:25 Total Playtime: 29:26 US Retail released under Barsuk Records - JP Retail released under P-Vine Records has obi packaging and different record label info on the back cover. * There's a reason we form our closest affinities with rock and pop music during our youth. There's something ineffably adolescent about our connections to our favorite musical artists. We may grow out of certain bands, genres, and even styles of art altogether, but the music we bond with at a young age rarely becomes a burden. If anything, study after study has shown the songs and records that we identify with as kids largely define our tastes forever. Which is also why a lot of the best rock music captures the indefinable quality of youth∙it speaks to a part of us that is caught in the perpetual trap of angst and ennui, the emotions that music, at its best, both identifies and pushes us out of with an artistic zeal that lets us feel freer, however briefly. And by any of these metrics, Guppy, the debut album by Charly Bliss, is a nearly flawless exemplar of its kind, a record that captures a certain sound, mood, and energy with the passion and exuberance of a teen as-yet-uncrushed by life. Put succinctly, Charly Bliss makes guitar pop-rock of the fuzzed-out kind embodied by '90s acts like the Breeders, Weezer, and others of their ilk. But rather than sounding like some Johnny-come-lately imitation, the band does its musical forbears one better: It has crafted a record so engaging and resonant, it feels more like a contemporary bedfellow of those acts than a latter-day application of the same tactics. It's a joyous outburst of brash and irascible energy, rising up with a wellspring of enthusiasm and a howl of 4/4 intensity that never forgets to be hooky or hummable. Whatever fizzy elixir of chemistry the band distilled in order to produce these 10 tracks of jangling chords and harmonies, it's a combination that succeeds where so many others fail. It's simple without being base, and familiar without once becoming derivative. Drummer Sam Hendricks meshes seamlessly with Dan Shure's pulsing bass lines, a rhythm section that grounds all those shimmering guitar riffs with the propulsive backbeats of arena-ready acts 10 times their seniors. And guitarist Spencer Fox has long had a knack for the unassuming guitar lines that complement, rather than take over or attempt to outdo, the music. Even when guitar solos threaten to take center stage, he wisely keeps the focus on the melody, sacrificing flash for songcraft. But the lodestone in Charly Bliss' scruffy pop edifice is singer Eva Hendricks. An infectiously effervescent frontperson with the energy of a punk-rock cheerleader and the biting lyricism to match, her vocals have the rough sandpaper edge of a Kim Deal fused to the freight-train shout-alongs of a Kathleen Hanna, bringing the best of both elements to the forefront. When things threaten to turn saccharine, she belts out appealing screams with the best of them, adding the necessary roughness to sweet musical hooks and savvy softer squeals to the harder melodies. But it's her words that create the atmosphere of forever-young passion and searching that permeate Guppy, making both rueful confessions and declarations of emotional war sound as relatable as breathing. When she describes the bad decisions that come from late nights with someone you shouldn't have stuck around with, it's both universal and perfectly individuated. "Don't you know I aim to please? I'm everybody's favorite tease, put your hand on my knee, that's what friends are for," she sings on album opener "Percolator," capturing the too-intimate-by-half mood of every impulsive hookup in history, as well as her own badass declaration of purpose. "My conscience is fucked, and my judgment is leaking": This is the sound of American youth, forever one step forward, three steps back, and another one sideways and tripping head-first into an amp for good measure. From there, it only gets better. "Glitter" nails the suspicion that comes with being someone's ostensible object of lust, only to realize it might be more fleeting than that ("Am I the best / Or just the first person to say yes?"), while "DQ" evokes the sense of fatalistic frustration we all confront at times, the fear that nothing good will ever come of our hopes and plans. Even album closer "Julia," the only song to slow things down and take a breather, eventually builds to a screaming coda of distortion and feedback, the only appropriate end to a record that so vitally documents the churning miasma of emotional wanderlust that characterizes the best rock albums. And maybe that's what is so essential about Guppy: It's the sound of rock music doing the timeless job it only achieves from its best practitioners. It's wholly adrift and disposable by any metric of serious analysis, but those very qualities are why it is absolutely necessary. It speaks to the uncertain core of each of us, doling out the screams and hollers of inner upheaval the rest of us lack the artistry to express in such passionate and expressive ways. Charly Bliss has made a record as alive and irrepressible as anything I've heard in years. Goddamn, but this is a record for the ages∙I can only imagine where they go from here. * Guppy is a special release, proving that all you need is 30 minutes of hooks and riffs sung by a voice familiar the first time you hear it. There's are two moments on Lana Del Rey's new collaboration with the Weeknd, "Lust for Life", in which both, individually, paraphrase the closing line of William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus": "We're the captains of our own souls." They take "souls" and stretch the word, taking a rollercoaster-esque approach to singing, slowly reaching higher notes before a precipitous drop on the last syllable. Few artists can tap into such adrenaline-inducing melodies with meaningful lyrics to match, and over a full-length album, it's even rarer. New York power pop band Charly Bliss have had their debut full-length Guppy in the works for years now, but now that it's out, the aforementioned qualities are plastered all over the ten songs, inscribing hooks into your brain while inspiring jubilant dancing. In short, it's the most fun album released thus far in 2017, ultimately legitimizing the multiple exclamations marks some lines in the lyrics booklet got and then some. This year has been positively bountiful for bouncy pop-rock with motion -- just see Diet Cig's debut and White Reaper's latest as two examples -- and Guppy doesn't let up on the trend. However, while the similarities with these bands and noted touchstones like Weezer are apparent in their frenetic honesty and undeniable riffs, the band that I keep returning to, listen upon listen (and there have been many such listens already) is the Strokes. Specifically, the Strokes circa-Is This It?, when they were a small discography band with intense hype that managed to make good on it and then some, crafting the defining rock album for a generation of New Yorkers. It's too early to proclaim Guppy as that distinctive of a release, but for the younger half of millennials, there has yet to be an album that so perfectly captures our experience like the Strokes did their demographic nearly two decades ago. Case in point, a Census report was released on April 19 that noted the difficulties in millennials' transitioning into stable adulthood. An NBC News article about the report interviewed a 21-year-old"'stuck' working as a manager at a fast-food restaurant". On Guppy, a punishment doled out to frontwoman Eva Hendricks for some love-induced cruelty is "end[ing] up working at Dairy Queen". The prospect itself as a long-term job is itself not appealing, but the way that Hendricks delivers that final line of the hook, you can hear her resigned sigh. Her early interest in musical theatre can be found in these voice inflections all over the album, molding her sonic grin into the emotional rainbow. And yet for as good as it sounds -- and it sounds as perfectly imperfect as the best indie-adjacent releases are supposed to, thanks to the steady hand of drummer Sam Hendricks (Eva's older brother), the addictive riffs of guitarist Spencer Fox, and the tying-the-room-together undercurrent of bass from Dan Shure, not to mention the engineering and mixing work done by Kyle Johnson -- the lyrics are just as much of a draw. Eva Hendricks has that rare quality of knowing what her voice is in both the written and spoken forms, and this marriage usually only is forged through decades of experience. Just look at how she opens the album: "C'mon baby, get me high / There's always something new to buy / I cry all the time / I think that it's cool / I'm in touch with my feelings / I have always loved the door / But I will always love you more / I love metaphors / Swimming in your pool, I am pregnant with meaning." The arrogant malaise of Julian Casablancas is transformed into just-the-right-amount-of-earnestness, and the effect is just as flooring. Each of the ten songs contains extensive quotables like the one above, made even better by the churning instruments under Hendricks. "Am I the best? / Or just the first person to say 'Yes'?" is a gut-punch of a couplet in and of itself, but given the recent Tinder data suggesting a trend towards looking for love, it's the type of sentiment young people entering the milestone phase of their life know all too well. "Julia" closes the album with an ambiguity similar to the way Sufjan Stevens opened The Age of Adz, and "Sad-sack, smell of weed / Now I only see you when I need to fall asleep" creates a middle that needs no explanation. Guppy is a special release. It has powers: the power to transport you back to some of your most formative experiences, but also the power to let you know that you're nowhere near done having them yet. That the best happened, and the best is yet to come. That being alive is confusing and irritating, and sometimes it's better to be alone except for when it's all-too-clear that being together is as beautiful as life gets; that there is a meaning of life and you're going to find it. That all you need is thirty minutes of hooks and riffs sung by a voice familiar the first time you hear it. That exactly what you need is 30 minutes of hooks and riffs sung by a voice familiar the first time you hear it. * You'd be hard-pressed to find a descriptor in the contemporary rock landscape more loaded than "bubblegum." Blame it on rockism, indie orthodoxy, or garden-variety grumpiness, but bands who season their craft with the sugary sounds of Top 40 will face skepticism regarding their staying power, and by extension, their musical credibility. This narrative, it should be noted, is frequently and ironically perpetuated by today's bubblegum faithful: namely, their tendency to frame the work of contemporary power pop bands in terms of decades-old teen comedies, a low-key backhanded compliment. Charly Bliss are wholly aware of these risks. Hell, their old merch setup featured a gumball machine filled with stickers and pins. But they couldn't care less, probably because these relative rookies are sitting pretty at the top of the New York concert circuit. The quartet's tight live show seamlessly blends high-fructose hooks with high-octane grunge, presided over by frontwoman Eva Hendricks: a spunky firebrand who zips around the stage like a Tasmanian Devil in Docs, pausing every so often to introduce her demons ("Who here struggles with crippling anxiety?", she chirped at a show earlier this year). The bandleader's emotional bluntness is the band's greatest asset, with her distinct squeal (think Courtney Love, after ingesting half a canister of helium) coming in at a close second. Sharpened properly, a sweet tooth can be a most formidable weapon. Charly Bliss successfully translate their viral onstage energy to record on their debut album Guppy, providing definitive, if ephemerally stated, proof that there's a lot more to bubblegum than easy cheer and Weezer worship, although there's certainly plenty of that as well. The 10-track, 30-minute effort was originally conceived as a grungy set, produced by Justin Pizzoferrato (Speedy Ortiz, Dinosaur Jr.), but the band would go on to scrap that version and start again ∙ this time with an uptick in immediacy. Considering Hendricks' brief tenure writing jingles, it's no surprise that her hooks cling to the ears like flypaper: "Glitter" swims with warm harmonies, followed by a white-hot solo from guitarist (and erstwhile The Incredibles star) Spencer Fox; the chuggy "Totalizer" climbs, plummets, and coasts like a roller coaster engineered by Kurt Cobain and operated by a chain-smoking cartoon character. Speaking of characters, as far as 2017 releases are concerned, there isn't a snappier, more introspective heroine than Hendricks on Guppy. "Show, don't tell" doesn't cut it for her when it comes to detailing her personal experiences with mental illness, heartbreak, and 20-something ennui, all dire narratives which stand in stark contrast to the sunny sonic proceedings. Instead, she shouts out her therapist ("Ruby") and her ex's new girlfriend ("Julia"), laughs at a love interest who's mourning his dead dog ("DQ"), and laments over depression-induced inorgasmia ("Glitter"). Sure, lyrics like "I bounced so high, I peed the trampoline/ I'm too sad to be mean" certainly qualify as over-sharing, but that's the point. Guppy lures you in with fine-crafted honey, before blindsiding you with a sudden downpour of vinegar (or piss, take your pick). This is why they call it "power pop." * Brooklyn-based quartet Charly Bliss ∙ with Eva Hendricks on vocals and guitar, brother Sam Hendricks on drums, Dan Shure on bass and Spencer Fox on guitar ∙ recorded their debut record Guppy with a couple things in mind: they felt out of step with the Brooklyn scene, and they loved pop music. They've combined that into something truly unique here: Guppy is a hyper, loveable, endearing, gritty, catchy romp through early 20s confusion, love, lust, travel and therapy (seriously: "Ruby" is an ode to Eva's therapist). It's like an updated, somehow catchier Dookie, scratching that existential itch of young adulthood with stigma-free honesty, gritty guitar and reckless, hyper-pop sensibilities that tie it all together. Opener "Percolator," which dropped in March as the record's second single, is a punchy, streamlined introduction; sparks fly from the first single-coil riff, before the whole band slams in for an early, authoritative climax, only leaning back when Eva's delightful, commanding voice cuts in. "Come on baby, get me high!" she belts, as though from the backseat of a top-down, cherry-red convertible careening down the highway. It's a blissful, action-packed thesis statement. The album is a clever exercise in repositioning of boring genre rules: sugary melodies set to grungy, fuzzy walls of guitar; pop structuring married with Eva's unabashed lyricism. Where you expect Charly Bliss to zig, they zag, in all the right ways. The chorus of "Black Hole" could've been a conventional affair, but a subtle shift in chord transition keeps things interesting. Elsewhere, the plucky, Cars-style power-pop sheen of "Glitter" is woven with Eva's unfiltered authenticity: "I can't cum and I can't lie / I can't stop making myself cry / I'll have my cake and eat it, too!" The later tracks up the ante sonically: the band's jammy grunge tendencies (the members all cite Weezer as a touchstone) are indulged on the lumbering "Gatorade," with Fox's clever, understated leads stealing the melodic spotlight from Eva. "Totalizer" doubles down on the theatrics, riding along at a pop-punk hum before descending into a huge, head-banging meltdown. That spits us out into "Julia," the record's apocalyptic closer. It takes the previous two tracks' hints at total grunge-rock abandon and extrapolates them, wasting no time with pleasantries. It's a slow stomp, with Fox's guitar and Eva's vocals taking swings at each other over Shure's and Sam's monolithic bottom end. It's a chaotic, unpolished final word, a declaration of territory; the fading feedback and ambient clatter seem to mutter over their shoulder, "We'll be back." That Charly Bliss don't prescribe to nor care about conventions is their identifying feature, but it also makes Guppy a little hard to place; this is a non-gripe, really, but it's worth noting that it's sometimes hard to suss out what Charly Bliss want to be. They make ultra-catchy power-pop songs one minute, and a grimy foray into desert rock the next. Bands should be free to dip in and out as they please, but the lane-changes do make for the occasional cognitive inconsistency. Even if that's the desired goal, it's still jarring. Good art is supposed to push the thresholds of comfort, though; it's not supposed to be an easy ride. That's not an absolute rule, but then again, if there were absolute rules, we might not have Guppy, in all its radical, naked emotion. * The New York band breathes life into the poppier side of '90s indie rock, and their debut is both wry and sincere in its expression of the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl. Featured Tracks: Charly Bliss make no secret they're a throwback. They hone in on an era from about 20 years ago, when seemingly every other band came blissed out, drenched in sun, and outfitted for a spot on the 10 Things I Hate About You or Jawbreaker soundtrack next to Veruca Salt. Back then, for every Breeders there were at least two Letters to Cleos or Stretch Princesses, and their legacy is now constrained doubly: condemned the first time around by a rockist critical establishment for being too poppy, then when everyone started being OK with pop again, dismissed with the same received condemnation. Thing is, this style never went away, it's just tended to age down. In the mid-'00s it retreated to teen pop∙one of Charly Bliss frontwoman Eva Hendricks' admitted biggest influences is the Adam Schlesinger/Kay Hanley power-pop vehicle that was Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack∙and Warped Tour-adjacent pop-punk like Paramore and Fall Out Boy. It bubbles up periodically in the poppier singles from acts like Honeyblood and Swearin', but the most mainstream outlet is, of all places, children's shows. Which is all well and glossy for the kids, but it's refreshing to hear a revival led by Charly Bliss made for adults. Charly Bliss took three years from 2014's EP Soft Serve to full-length debut Guppy, largely due to grappling with this context. The original incarnation of Guppy was a garage-rock set produced by Justin Pizzoferrato (Parquet Courts, Speedy Ortiz), but the whole thing got scrapped on grounds of grunge. "We've learned a lot from looking to bands that are more poppy," Hendricks told The Fader, and the new record pulls no punches and sacrifices no hooks. Half the tracks run about three minutes or less. "Percolator" is a fake-out: the first couple seconds of Strokes guitars give way to an ebullient, literally cheering single. In case the hook of "Black Hole" weren't enough, we get it again with a key change, and "Westermarck" and "Glitter" take to their choruses like flowers to the sun. This all sounds simple, but it's not. Executed poorly, an entire album of this might induce sugar shock. Or, like too many modern acts indebted to '90s indie-pop, it might emulate the style rather than the substance, using nostalgia like a flashy suit to compensate for a lack of anything to say. But these hooks are delivery mechanisms for often acerbic, often exhausted lyrics about the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl. Charly Bliss gets this; there's a bluntness to Hendricks' lyrics reminiscent of The Pink Album-era Tuscadero or, at their bitterest, the quick-cut unease of early Throwing Muses. It'd be easy for a track called "DQ" to stop at its titular reference∙it's ice cream! So kitschy! Instead, it kills off a puppy in the first line∙"I laughed when your dog died/It is cruel but it's true/...Does he love me most now that his dog is toast?"∙and when Dairy Queen finally shows up, it's not quirky but rather the final dead end in Charly Bliss' teenage wasteland. "Westermarck" (per its title, referencing the Westermarck effect) tosses in kissing cousins by the second line. It's not all shock value, though. "Ruby" is an earnest, lyrically stark thank-you note to a therapist, the languid "Julia" a mash note to a friend (or more; it's ambiguous). The glossiest part of "Glitter" is, crucially, the bleakest: "Am I the best? Or just the first person to say yes?" It's an old songwriting trick, but it always works. Then on the standout "Percolator," Hendricks takes all the shit she's given ("Eva, you're being too nice, everyone is going to think you're flirting with them," she said in an interview with Bandcamp) as well as all the cudgels critics took to female-fronted bands and prods at them with exhausted sarcasm: "Swimming in your pool, I am pregnant with meaning/Could I be more appealing? Writing slurs on the ceiling?" It's like a deeply mocking recap of a mid-'90s music video, but it's simultaneously the most earnest track. "I cry all the time/I think that it's cool/I'm in touch with my feelings" is ironic, but it's the kidding-not-kidding irony that increasingly defines the decade. It works on multiple levels: as tossed-off sarcasm, as a statement of pride, and, crucially, as an undeniable pop song. It's a deceptively hard balance to strike, but Charly Bliss does it effortlessly. * Charly Bliss are a very unique-sounding power pop act and honestly, an acquired taste. Vocalist Eva Hendricks will either lure you in or turn you off with her high-pitched voice (which a friend likened to Laura Stevenson on hard auto-tune). Be that as it may, Hendricks' voice works for me, because it conveys a wide range of emotions, not just lyrically, but in terms of tone -- all amid a flock of poppy melodies and catchy riffs. Guppy as a debut does have room for growth but it's a distinct statement that matches the highs that Hendricks hits and the ambitions of a band whose cult following surely expanded this year. Influential bands like Weezer and even indie peers like Tancred pop to mind, especially with the synth bombs dropping here and there to sound off something you can tell wasn't made in a big-time studio. In terms of this rough indie sound, take in "Westermarck", "Ruby" and even the slower "Gatorade". I love how Charly Bliss, as with these songs, manage to flow through various tempos and rhythms so effortlessly, pumping brakes most of the time to keep things at a head-nodding, foot-tapping tempo, but still doing enough to jag you with its cute pace. Then you've got "DQ" which feels like a tempered-down Paramore track that should have been out when MTV played music videos and truth be told, speeds things up with a mainstream flair. In fact, this track more or less signals why Charly Bliss won't stay underground for long. A little more anger and roughing up is needed for their musical style, but undoubtedly, one of Brooklyn's best-kept secrets is out now with Guppy swimming among the masses. * Intended or not, indie rock quartet Charly Bliss built some anticipation in the lead-up to their first album. It follows a pair of EPs and a string of high-profile live shows opening for acts such as Sleater-Kinny, Tokyo Police Club, and even Veruca Salt, a musical antecedent. The record also follows some scrapped efforts in the studio while the group struggled to find the right balance of their shambolic rock style and tendency toward bright pop hooks. They finally decided the two could co-exist and settled into a gritty power pop for their full-length debut, Guppy. Whatever work they did on perfecting -- or unleashing -- their sound, they found a distinctive one, despite its patent roots in the '90s alt-rock of bands like Weezer and the aforementioned Veruca Salt. That's thanks in large part to lead singer Eva Hendricks, who sports a particularly chirpy, youthful voice that both contrasts and perfectly suits her gruffer accompaniment. While her delivery is highly melodic, bordering on theatrical at times, Hendricks lets loose on the infectious opening track "Percolator," even screaming over churning guitars and crashing cymbals. Most of the album follows that example, with driving hook after hook, though tempos and distortion do vary. Along with candid lyrics mostly concerned with objects of affection, being on the outside, feeling vulnerable, and looking for connections ("I don't want to scare you/I don't want to share you"), songs called "DQ" and "Gatorade" keep things decidedly unpretentious. In fact, Guppy may be just the ticket for those looking for a reprieve from the ubiquitous gloss of electro-pop, and they can have it without sacrificing catchiness or sunny vibrations. -=- SHGZ -=- P.S. ** Thanks *** *** BCC FNT IPC SSR *** *** For Knowing Where The Music Is At *** *** Props to CaHeSo, awesome Asian Indie/Shoegaze *** *** And to FANG/HOUND for supporting all the Indie lovers out there *** --===-- ********************* * NuHS we miss you! * *********************