"I don’t find total despair to be that interesting of a subject," Charly Bliss' Eva Hendricks told me over the phone earlier this month. "Joy is so much more interesting."
According to the power pop frontwoman, she's always struggled with anxiety and depression, but instead of going there in the band's songs, she finds it "so much more therapeutic" to just laugh at herself.
"I don't like feeling pathetic," she added, laughing.
Considering Charly Bliss made practically every year-end list, from Pitchfork to Stereogum to NPR, the band is anything but pathetic. To top it all off, they are currently on the second leg of their national tour with Wolf Parade, who Hendricks described as "the nicest guys."
The success is well-deserved when you take into account how much of a struggle it was for the band to record their latest album, "Guppy."
"Looking back it felt like such a nightmare. I called my mom crying like every day about it. I would call my mom saying, 'The universe is telling me to stop!'" Hendricks said.
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As moms are wont to do, Hendricks' mom offered her daughter some sage advice: "'Eva, when you’re doing the right thing, doors will just start to open up whenever you least expect it.'"
And even though "everything that could go wrong went wrong," Hendricks ended up being really grateful for it.
"In a way, it taught me instead of freaking out about everything that goes wrong ... What do I do when things do go wrong?" she said.
"I think we have a better perspective just in general about everything," Hendricks added.
Charly Bliss play Observatory North Park with Wolf Parade on Tuesday, Jan. 23. Get tickets here.
Rutger Rosenborg was almost a Stanford poet-neuroscientist before he formed Ed Ghost Tucker. Whoops. He now fronts the Lulls and makes music on his own when he's not writing. Follow his updates on Instagram and Twitter (@RArosenborg), add him on Facebook or contact him directly.
