“Keep me down / Cause I live to drown in love like this / I want you to be my last first kiss.” Charly Bliss’s latest album of alternative pop bangers is a look at love—its insane obsessions, its cool reasonings—and concludes that they want it, Forever, the title of their new record. Recently Taylor Swift has been taking the world by storm, and Charly Bliss’s country influenced indie rock is in much the same vein. But perhaps a bit more if it was married to the band Paramore, who recently opened a slew of shows on the Eras tour.

“Once you let me drive the car, you know I’m gonna crash it,” Eva Hendricks starts on the album opener, “Tragic,” which begins with 80s drums, keyboards, and bass. But the album has an interesting story arc, leading from erratic passionate love to something more fit for a family life together. In between are songs about old flames (“Nineteen”), spending time with friends (“In Your Bed”), and diving deep again and again into romantic relationships (“How do you do it? / You get through it, then you put yourself through it again”).

It’s a dynamic record, up there with the highest energy music out there today, with a bit more of an alternative and indie style. They are songs that will certainly soundtrack the love affairs of 20- and 30-somethings, like Eva. There is a profound passion and an honesty to the record: “But I’m not, I’m not dead / even if I was / I’d wish that I fucked up at least twice as much and had like double the fun.” There’s a good deal of 80’s influence on the record, in fact—almost as much as the country influences on the record—though it finds a perfect home, here in 2024, with its pop rock goodness.

The band is growing and changing, having babies, moving to new continents, diving again and again into the arms of another, but their love for music remains the thing that they come back to. You can feel the love on the record, not only for friends and lovers, but for the pure bliss (the Charly Bliss) of playing music together. It’s a banging record, though there are plenty of slower (more Taylor Swift-like) moments; like the song “Nineteen,” which recalls her to a T. It’s a dynamic record, which ultimately chooses the faithfulness and familiarity of love over the addictive highs of flings, the crashed cars and the desperate doubts of desires, showing a band maturing, both musically and emotionally.

Order Forever by Charli Bliss HERE