5 Records That Inspired Charly Bliss’ New Album ‘Forever’

“We’ve never been more proud of anything we’ve created,” Eva Hendricks, singer of Charly Bliss, says the day before their first record in five years drops. 

After a pandemic-induced studio break, the bubble-grunge darlings have returned with their third record, Forever. The album sees the four-piece take on new, more lush electronic sounds while maintaining their sparkling, fun-loving identity.

Over the last five years, singer Eva Hendricks has moved from the U.S. to Australia, her brother, Sam Hendricks, the group’s drummer, became a parent (throughout the interview, the siblings took turns running to the other room to keep his children occupied,) and the world shut down. Unable to properly record, the band has been passing around the demos that would eventually become Forever since 2020.

On the eve of the release, Eva and Sam spoke about the records that inspired the band and played an integral role in the final draft of Forever, the album that they’re most proud of.

Eva Hendricks: [This record] is a huge influence on this album. I will never forget listening to that album for the first time. We weren’t aware of the first Muna album. So we became fans through their second album, Saves the World, and I think we found out about it during the release week of that album. Dan [Shure] showed it to us in the van. I remember feeling like, “Yes, this is the kind of music I want to be making.”

It felt like the first time in a while that a band was making unique, interesting, creative pop music that was introspective with unique lyrics. I could pour over those lyrics forever. It also exists well with sing-along choruses and very universal themes. That’s such a hard thing to achieve. I remember hearing those songs and feeling so inspired. That stayed with us throughout the making of Forever.

That song “Good News” feels so free and open and is existential but also happy, and I think we wanted to achieve a similar sound on this album.

Sam Hendricks: You can hear how much fun [Paramore] was having in the studio. You can hear that it is what they wanted to do as a band. I feel like it’s just like it was so different than anything that came before it, and it just felt like they embraced what they wanted to be. They didn’t care about what fans expected. It’s just an incredible album. It’s so fun. It’s still true to them, even though it sounds so different.

I saw them live for the first time last year, and it was just one of the most inspiring shows I’ve seen in a long time. The stage production was insane. The songs and all the sounds were huge. They’re such a good role model for us because they started as one thing, and they have evolved while staying true to themselves, and it doesn’t sound like they’re trying to do anything that doesn’t feel true to them.

SH: I really got into Metric over the pandemic. I had always known the hits, but I also started to learn music production when the pandemic began. We couldn’t rehearse as a band. I couldn’t play drums. I could still write songs. I could only really play guitar. I just wanted to try something different.

I spent months learning music production, and [Metric] has done the synth-pop rock so well. I feel like they have such a specific sound. I listened to a ton of Metric over the pandemic, especially [Synthetica]. The song “Lost Kitten” is perfect. I was obsessed at the moment. I heard it. It helped that my kids were obsessed, too. They loved it. They’re just another band that is a good example of what we want to be doing with our sound.

EH: We love HAIM so much. In the studio, we thought about them more than any other influence. There’s a sense of warmth to all of their music. No matter what medium they’re working in, whether it’s guitar or pop-based music, there’s a world of their songs that feels consistent. There’s just a specific quality to all of their music that we wanted to achieve as well. 

As a band, we were thinking about how we could afford ourselves the chance to play in different genres and follow what feels exciting to us while still capturing what’s specific to Charly Bliss and makes us who we are. HAIM is a band that does that so perfectly. They can mess around in any genre, and you’ll still know it’s a HAIM song. You’re willing to go wherever they go. That was exciting to us while we were making this record.

SH: Production-wise, they are good at making songs feel big without throwing a ton of stuff at the wall. That is something that we tried to do with this record. There are some pretty maximalist moments, but we can’t help ourselves. We were figuring out how we needed the production to serve a purpose at all times. What’s necessary to make the song big without making it too insane? They were a production reference the whole time.

EH: Matty Healy’s music and then the 1975‘s music was a big influence on us all while we were working on this. They’re a classic example of another band that has messed around in many different genres, and I don’t think anyone ever blinks when they do it. We used that as a guiding light.

Also, as a lyricist, Matty Healy does a great job of capturing humor in lyrics and not taking himself too seriously while also revealing a lot. I admire him as a lyricist. How do you make pop songs that feel unique and don’t follow a very cookie-cutter lyrical theme but still make everyone in a big room feel like they relate to it?