Album Review: Young Enough by Charly Bliss

Charly Bliss' New Album is a Perfect Summer Playlist

By Ryan Brunt

Courtesy of Barsuck Records

Summer is in full swing, so that means we’re in the middle of frantically restocking our playlists with the perfect music for the season.  But luckily for us, Charly Bliss has heard our prayers for fun summery pop, and blessed us with their sophomore full length, Young Enough.  Coming two years after the band’s full-length debut, this album represents a significant break from their earlier sound; On Young Enough, Charly Bliss polishes their debut’s grungier edges into 11 songs worth of beach-ready pop.
​

The album leads off with a serious one-two punch.  Album opener “Blown to Bits” sees lead vocalist Eva Hendricks’ trademark voice harmonized into a robotic choir, floating over buzzing synthesizers and shimmering guitars.  But the colorful instrumentation stands in stark contrast to the casual fatalism of the hook- “It’s gonna break my heart to see it blown to bits.” This juxtaposition of joyous melody and troubled lyrics is something that Charly Bliss explores further on the second track, “Capacity.”  Hendricks floats over a glittering approximation of 80s pop that wouldn’t be out of place on any number of new wave records, but the lyrics describe some uniquely 21st century anxieties.  The speaker is “triple overtime ambitious,” a “sentimental, anxious kid.”  Rather than contradicting one another, though, the thorny lyrical content and the thoroughly pop songcraft end up lending each other greater depth than they would have otherwise.  That dissonance reaches its peak on one of the first singles released for this album, “Chatroom.” To put it simply, “Chatroom” is a really fun song.  Layers of guitars, synthesizers, and drums are melded together into a perfect base that builds into one of the album’s catchiest hooks.  But underneath that joyous confection, subtle enough that you’ll miss it if you aren’t listening too close, Hendricks details a traumatic sexual assault; “I was fazed in the spotlight/his word against mine.”  The darkness of the lyrics turns the song into something cathartic- the repeated singalong chorus almost turns into a mantra. It’s hard to make fun pop songs that still have something to say, but on Young Enough, Charly Bliss proves themselves capable time and time again.   

The emotional centerpiece of the album, both literally and figuratively, is the title track.  The five- minute slow-burner is leagues away from the band’s early material- the ambitious structure and stadium-ready instrumentation would fit perfectly on a mid-80s Bruce Springsteen album- but it still feels like a natural progression for the group.  The lyrics on this song, and the rest of the album for that matter, feel significantly more complex than their previous work; it makes perfect sense that the instrumentation would develop similarly. Making that jump is easier said than done, though, especially for a band like Charly Bliss, whose early work is rooted in punk rock and power pop, two genres that seem almost totally incompatible with the kind of experimentation on display here.  But the band sticks the landing flawlessly, and in the process has put together a really fun and engaging body of work.