charly bliss: guppy

http://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2017/02/guppy_sq-0f206a75110d9dc3170c3ad5bb741f80c2764aec-s500-c85-1486480037-compressed.jpg

hi everyone this is my fav band in new york, like most bands in new york they recall the '90s but this is more specifically the belly/veruca salt axis if a little squeakier and more invariably bright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_2UqssvaSc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGhFsNP_Rdk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-grIezjeaw

album out april 24

<3

as expected this thread will be authored by me and johnny fever, no features

very catchy

this is what all bands in nyc sound like now?

j/k tho i feel like there's not an insignificant amount of '90s throwback rock bands here or in philly

these guys have a particular ear for hooks though imo and prioritize the pop as much if not slightly more than the power which sets them apart

i've been waiting for a thread where i could casually drop the names of letters to cleo and eve's plum and not feel unwelcome.

also, they seem like they should be from boston, not new york.

I will admit and acknowledge that the throwbackness of Charly Bliss is what drew me to them initially, but Brad is right that they write exquisitely hooky songs that take the whole enterprise well above pastiche.

I've been trying to nail who exactly Eva's voice reminds me of. I'm still not there, but one day it will come to me.

kind of close vocally: paula kelley of the drop nineteens (speaking of boston):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaN1rMjH18E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKl8Gw68awY

song r0cks

is this album out yet?

sorry, reread OP

my god, this is the new best band ever

this is the closest 90s thing to charly bliss imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glDFPjrolx0

yes! that dog. was what immediately came to mind for me, too. charly singer is a bit squeakier than Anna Waronker, but yes.

Yeah, BradNelson is OTM that they bring the hooks. Thanks for pointing this band out

Charly Bliss are great. They've been around for awhile—"Love Me" was one of my favorite songs of 2014—I'm glad they're finally releasing an album (thankfully it's not loaded with old songs, like Bully's debut; "Ruby," "Percolator," and "Gatorade" are the only tracks already released). Does anyone else prefer the Audiotree Live version of "Percolator"? I love her yelp in the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elL0ktbhhnM

Great song and love the video for it. "Black Hole" is "Bad Box" on their audiotree live performance for those interested.

this band seems great

Guppy streaming now at NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/13/523437524/first-listen-charly-bliss-guppy

omg

oh yeah this is precisely as good as i expected it to be

yeah this totally rules, hooks for days

mentioning belly made me very curious.

This is everything I wanted it to be <333

unsurprisingly I love this album, but it is way more like kay hanley than tanya donelly, both in sound and songwriting

Yeah, there's nothing Belly-ish about this at all. I like it more than I ever liked Letter to Cleo, though.

I'm not sure why they re-recorded "Ruby." I mean, it's about 99% the same, but the tiny differences are throwing me off.

btw the answer to who her voice reminds you of is mz moxy, or at least it is for me

This album is a miracle

And yeah I hear Letters to Cleo here more than anyone else, but they never made an album this consistently good

"DQ" is so killer

Of the songs posted itt, I quite like "Glitter." The rest are somewhere between "yeah, this is catchy" and "but did I really need another Letters to Cleo record?" Still, I'll check out the album. Hoping "Glitter" isn't the only track with synths on it.

it's not! did....did you not need another letters to cleo record?

I liked LtC, but I haven't touched their 90s records in years.

I mean we just DID get another letters to cleo record also

and that's not counting Weaponize or either of the Palmdale EPs

yeah also that!

Can't stop playing this album. Definitely my favorite of the year so far. Torn between "DQ" and "Glitter" as the best song on it.

i really like the rerecording of "ruby" and generally how much synth they layered over this thing

I came around to the new "Ruby"; took some getting used to. Was listening to the A Lot to Say and Soft Serve EPs today and realized just how much progress they've made with Guppy (really glad Eva takes lead vocals on all 10 tracks).

Also, she's quickly becoming one of my favorite lyricists. So funny, bizarre, and self-deprecative, but not in a classically emo tear-yourself-down kinda way. So many quotables on this record, but the opening lines of "DQ" are my favorite: "I laughed when your dog died/it's cruel, but it's true/take me back, kiss my soft side/does he love me most now that his dog is toast?"

katherine this is great! http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23085-guppy/

Doesn't sound like them particularly but something reminds me of The Blake Babies.

I made a post in this thread yesterday giving Katherine a hi-five for namedropping Stretch Princess in 2017, but it disappeared. I can't let that acknowledgement go unappreciated though, so I'm posting it again.

"jawbreaker soundtrack" could be swapped out for "she's all that soundtrack" or really just like any soundtrack between 1995-2005

Love this album.

this is great, they totally get that the best of this stuff was about hard rock as much as it was about hooks

ennhhh, not especially

I want to like this so much. They kind of have "Erica band" written all over them and yet I find her voice so awful and grating that I can't listen to any of it beyound a couple seconds. :/

hey so just to check in we now all agree that the new one fucking owns right? good

Nah, still hate it.

what's the irish phrase? git tae fuck?

I've made peace with the fact they don't owe me another album that hits me the way Guppy did, so y'all enjoy.

I'm a sucker for albums about bad relationships tbqh

I can't fault them for changing things up a bit, because they're still exceedingly competent about it. It's just not my particular bag. otoh the other big disappointment I had this year (Marina's album) comes down entirely to the fact she's become incredibly timid in her musical expression and the result is devoid of personality and risk. Charly Bliss didn't get shy. They just got more polished.

Not a day goes by that "Capacity" isn't playing in my head at some point. And also usually "Camera."

"Under You" gets me right in the pit of my self-abnegating heart

I'm pretty far removed from feeling relationship shit deeply at this point (I haven't so much as dated since 2012), so nothing about love and loss hooks me to the degree it might have in the past.

interesting -- not that the songs aren't about that but I wouldn't call charly bliss's core appeal their being about deep relationship shit

You're right. Not saying they really go spelunking into the deep, but silby's apparently taking that away from listens to the album.

did I say deep?

"pit of my self-abnegating heart" insinuated as much. Ignore me, though!

The whole of this exchange is very low stakes for me, and I'm really just basing all my objections on the synths lol

I mean I think it's high-impact, like cf. the two most romantic things I've seen in the movies lately are Max giving blood to Furiosa and the consensual mushroom poisoning in Phantom Thread if that gives you a sense of my brain I don't know if I think it's deep

the synths are good they're like woomwoomwoom and then on other songs the guitars are like grangrangrang

I normally don't post on ILM lol but something like one album per year totally wrecks me and this year it's this one so I wanna yell about it

Go off! I'm glad people still have that energy. I don't anymore, even if I'm totally into something. I've only posted a couple times on the Meernaa thread, and that's my clear 2019 fave.

oh I meant, the core appeal seems to me like the hooks, where basically anything could be sung over them and it'd still be great; the lyrics are a bonus

find it impossible to think of the lyrics as a "bonus" in an album like this but the world is full of different kinds of people and that's great

at first i was indifferent, but this is a grower it seems

Saw 'em in Sydney a couple of weeks back, and they were great. Feel like the newer songs have more of a kick live with a higher tempo and less emphasis on the synths. They really just sounded more like Guppy songs, and for the better. Anyway, they had great energy and seemed like they were having lots of fun.

Mr. Brightside cover was cool.

I have to admit that I've warmed up to it (some more) in the last months. Now it's... fine.
But yes, as Johnny Fever said, they don't owe me a Guppy 2 and that's perfectly okay.
By now I'm just glad that this seems to be enjoyed by a lot of people.

new ep! https://charlybliss.bandcamp.com/album/supermoon

lovely news! still going back to young enough pretty regularly

and to drop it on a rare occasion i can listen at work, so thoughtful!

fans of guppy who couldn't get down with the new lp: idk, seems like this is for you

how do they write so many good songs

was mid supermoon and came to post the same thing

Niiiice!

Holy shit @ "Threat." I'm constantly wrestling with whether or not I was that guy in my youth, and I don't think I was to that degree, but I feel this in my bones.

This new E.P sounds somewhat like a bunch of Demos. Everything is quite basic, thin and...boring :(

"heaven" giving me breeders vibes.

these songs are all pretty good except for "supermoon"

ended their set tonight with a dancing on my own cover

best band in the world

ended their set tonight with a dancing on my own cover

― devvvine, Wednesday, November 6, 2019 3:11 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

inject it into my veins

and yeah, the new EP is so-so but Supermoon and Heaven are great

And when the sidewalk ripped up our frozen feet
I can't protect you now if I couldn't save you then
You were still just a kid
You're a beautiful boy
Crushing cigarettes just to prove a point

Young Enough is such a great album.

new music tomorrow, yippee skippee!

Great news. I saw them in April and they said the album was finished. The new material sounded really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzoS0wt7D-U

it's quite a pop move, not bad but doesn't really play to their strengths either

Hard no

feel like i've heard this song 50 times before, and that's just in ILX EOY singles polls

don't think it's good enough to make the eoy poll really

you just wait lol

i'm talking about its slightly-superior forebears mind

Hmm yeah, I don't think they played this one when I saw them. It's not great. The other songs sounded so much better, especially the emo ballad.

jfc why are they so terrible now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBuM5eyjXtg

Yeah I don't like the way they've gone with these post- Young Enough tracks. To me that one was the perfect middle ground between a glossy slick sound and 4 people just playing in a room. The sonic whiz-bang cluttered production style is not doing them any favors.