Charly Bliss Are Keeping Indie Rock Fun

What were some of the challenges — or possibly advantages — of the songwriting process happening virtually?

It was so much fun. I never would have predicted that it would have worked for us, but it really did. I think there’s a lot of pressure trying to be in the same room as people and write a song and work on things. I think I really benefit from being able to go really internal and work something out before I’m ready to let other people hear and react to it. So being able to kind of say, “OK, I’m going to go in the other room for a second and work on something,” or, “I’m going to mute myself for a couple minutes.” And the time zone difference was actually really helpful. Keep in mind, Sam was a new dad through a lot of writing this album, so the fact that my morning was his nighttime was incredibly advantageous to us. Morning, noon, and night kind of ceased to mean anything, because it was like someone is probably always awake in Charly Bliss, so we could work on something.

Then while someone was sleeping, I would work on recording vocals, and then I would send it over to the guys, and then while I was sleeping, they would work on the track. It kind of became this never-ending working period for us. Instead of being like, “OK, we have the practice space for three hours, we have to figure out what’s going on with the song in that time slot.” It felt very seamless and because we didn’t have restaurant jobs or whatever, we were kind of constantly immersed in the process of writing this album. And that was really wonderful for us.

To my ears, this album feels like a mix of the rock-focused Guppy and the more pop-leaning Young Enough. “How Do You Do It,” in particular, reminds me a bit of E•MO•TION-era Carly Rae Jepsen, and then it goes to the fuzzed-out “I Don’t Know Anything.” Did you go into the studio with a sound you were looking for?

It was more of a feeling. There was something about making Guppy that was so special because we didn’t think anyone was going to hear it. I mean, we knew our friends and our parents would hear it and that was about it, and I think there was this sense of no one’s watching. Whereas on Young Enough, we felt overwhelmed by the sense of: people are watching. It was such a condensed turnaround of like, OK, while we’re on tour, every time we’re home, we have to be writing, and then we have to get into the studio, and we have to turn this around as quickly as possible. Whereas, on Forever, we were able to re-find that feeling of no one’s watching. It was so important to us to feel playful in the studio, to feel really creative and free, and return to that feeling that we had captured on Guppy. That was exactly what we wanted to make. Instead of like, what do we think people are hoping for from us?

The truth is, we’ve always loved both of those things. We’ve always loved both very sleek pop and really crunchy guitar music, and I think the bands that have been our touchstones for the longest have also kind of done that as well, like played between those worlds. I’m thinking of Weezer and even a band like Haim, and now Olivia Rodrigo is working in that world, and that’s so exciting to us. We love it. I think it was mostly about, how do we make this album? This distillation of what our collective brains sound like, and less about genre.