Forever

Following the release of their sophomore album, Young Enough, and related touring in 2019, Charly Bliss needed a break and got one just in time for the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lead singer Eva Hendricks relocated to Australia, and they took their time writing and working on their third album remotely. They released a handful of singles and starting touring again in earnest in 2022 and 2023, and recorded the resulting FOREVER, their first album in five years, with Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus), Caleb Wright (Samia), and Charly Bliss drummer Sam Hendricks (Evas brother) producing. While the songs grapple with the doubt, change, waves of gratitude, and personal heartache of the time, the band had a mandate in place for the album that the tracks had to be fun. While Charly Bliss remain tethered to the brighter pop-punk and grunge-pop of bygone decades, they continue in the poppier direction of the albums predecessor, even employing throbby synth bass on songs like "Calling You Out" and programmed beats on the bloopy opening track "Tragic," a midtempo effort that anticipates the end of a relationship that hasnt really gotten going yet. Likewise conflicted, before the dancy "Back There Now" reaches its sparkling, chant-injected chorus, it opens with the line "When you say you miss me, are you thinking of someone else?" FOREVER continues in similarly apprehensive fashion through songs that, for the most part, bubble, sparkle, and pulse, with the exception of a couple stripped-back ballads ("Nineteen," "Easy to Love You"), which also happen to be among the records most affectionate entries. More than one song comments on life as a musician, including "Waiting for You," which Eva Hendricks has referred to as a love song to her bandmates written while isolated. FOREVER ends on "Last First Kiss," an anthem for the hope of a forever partner. The combination of bright, 80s artifice, 90s cynicism, and 2020s uncertainty here works, if the "fun" is often tinged with consternation. ~ Marcy Donelson