Charly Bliss at Turf Club, St Paul (17 Sep 2024)

Brooklyn’s Charly Bliss returned to the Twin Cities, playing the Turf Club, in St Paul, on September 17, 2024, in support of their forthcoming album Forever (set for release on August 16 via Lucky Number).

We’ve seen the band a few times (the last one in May 2017) and have mentioned, “Though they’ve been a band for half a decade, it seems like the time is now for Charly Bliss, the four-piece breaking through to alternative radio and singer Eva Hendricks was in full celebration mode, even dressing in a fetching white dress, reminiscent of Doll Parts-era Courtney Love. The group is in support of debut full length, Guppy (Barsuk Records) released just a couple weeks ago, with the Onion’s AV Club already deeming it “an instant classic”. The band’s sound is akin to the likes of Sleater-Kinney and Veruca Salt (who they’ve both toured with) and consists of Hendricks, her older brother Sam, bassist (and former boyfriend) Dan Shure, and guitarist Spencer Fox, who she met at age fifteen and who actually voiced Dash in Disney’s The Incredibles and Mudbud in Air Buddies.”

So, it’s been a while since we saw the group, I was surprised to see the very healthy turn out for the band at the Turf Club. According to the band, parts of the new, upcoming album Forever was recorded in Minnesota, and that may be why there was a strong turnout and support for the band on a Tuesday night.

Reading up on the recording process, I found out that Forever literally took forever, because it began in 2020 (during the pandemic), and was the first time the group had wrote songs being apart. Eva was stuck in Australia, for example. The remote writing process, with no deadlines, gave their new songs time to grow and evolve, and, most importantly, to experiment.

You can see from the photos, just how excited Charly Bliss was to play again. Eva came out dressed in a yellow ballerina-esque outfit, and baby doll makeup.

Local group, Why Not was not originally on the bill, but was added to the show at the last minute. Based on what was said on stage, apparently members of the band worked on the Forever album so they were asked to help with this show. They were so grateful to be on stage, and they tested out a new song called, “Maybe.”

They ended their brief set with “Golden.”

I was actually excited to see now-local singer Raffaella again.

 

It’s nice to see Raffaella with new songs and new look. I first saw her in Sep 2019, and it’s a nice-and-day difference. It was her first time in Minneapolis: “New York’s Raffaella (with live backing band bassist Charlie and drummer Alonso) opened up the show with a very brief 30-min set. This was the singer/songwriter’s first time in Minneapolis, and she started her set with her first single, “Bruce Willis” (which she jokingly called it “yippee ki-yay motherf***er”). Although she’s still very new to the music scene (with only one EP called Ballerina released in August 2019 via Mom+Pop), you can tell that she’s been performing for a while now. It probably won’t be long until she’s back in town, and with a strong audience support, given that she’s won over quite a few fans in the audience.”

Little did I know that shortly after, she met lead singer of Hippo Campus, Jake Luppen, and soon moved to Minneapolis.

After “drama queen” was played, Raffaella mentioned that she was working on her album. She’s already released a pair of Live, Raff, Love EPs, parts 1 and 2. She described the first release as the ‘light’, while the second, companion EP, was the ‘shadow’.

Charly Bliss remaining tour dates: