5/2: Charly Bliss and Skating Polly at The Ca v The Camel
THE CAMEL & SLIMEHOLE Present:
CHARLY BLISS (NYC, Barsuk)
http://www.charlybliss.com/
SKATING POLLY (Oklahoma, Chap Stereo)
http://www.skatingpolly.com/
Wednesday May 2, 2018
7PM Doors // 8PM Sounds
$13 ($1 for every ticket goes to Planned Parenthood) // All Ages
Tickets: http://ticketf.ly/2DMr2EM
After killing it at Smatter with Sorority Noise and again with some killer locals, Slimehole is happy to team up with THE CAMEL for their third club gig in town! CHARLY BLISS play some amazing indie-pop straight outta NYC and on the amazing Barsuk Records. If that weren't enough they're touing alongside SKATING POLLY, a sister duo out of Oklahoma who have worked with some amazingly big names despite age and regional locale including Exene Cervenka, Calvin Johnson and Kliph Scurlock! So pumped on this killer bill as well as the fact they are teaming up to donate $1 from every ticket sold to Planned Parenthood!
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CHARLY BLISS: If it's true that listening to just the right record at just the right moment can psychically transport you to some other time and place, then CHARLY BLISS, an NYC band responsible for having crafted some of the finest guitar-crunched power pop this side of an old Weezer record with a blue cover-can pretty much turn any space into an adult-friendly version of your old teenage bedroom, a candy-scented safe space for extreme fits of happiness and angsty teen-level explosions of romantic ennui.
Though Charly Bliss has been a band for over half a decade, the path that led to their first full-length record, Guppy, has been anything but straightforward. As the story goes, the band officially started when frontwoman Eva Hendricks and guitarist Spencer Fox, both just 15, crossed paths at a Tokyo Police Club show in New York City, but the ties within the band go much deeper than that. "It's kind of insane and hilarious," says Eva, "Sam is my older brother, so obviously we've known each other our whole lives, but all of us have been connected to each other since we were little kids. Dan Shure and I dated when we were in our early teens and he and Spencer went to summer camp together. Dan and I broke up years ago, but eventually he'd become our bass player. The reason we all get along so well has to do with the fact we share this ridiculous history. We are all deeply embedded in each other's lives."
After spending years playing shows in and around New York City, the band eventually released an EP (2014's Soft Serve) and scored opening gigs for the likes of Glass Animals, Darwin Deez, Tokyo Police Club, Sleater-Kinney, as well as a touring spot for their own musical forebears, Veruca Salt. Even though the band had amassed a sizable fanbase and a reputation as a truly formidable live act, the goal of making a full-length record proved to be a fraught series of false-starts. Given their propensity for making hooky, ebullient pop songs, the band often felt out of step with what was happening around them in Brooklyn. ("We weren't weird in the right ways," says Sam). They eventually set about recording an album on their own-and then recording it twice-before figuring out what had been staring them in the face the entire time. "We basically had to come to terms with the fact that we are, at heart, a pop band," recalls Spencer. "Before, it was always trying to decide which of the songs would be more 'rock' and which would be more poppy, but we eventually realized we needed to meet in the middle, we had to create an ecosystem where our loud, messy rock sounds could co-exist with these super catchy melodies and pop hooks. It was really about realizing what we're best at as a band."
The ten tracks that make up Guppy, Charly Bliss' sparkling full-length debut, show the band embracing all of their strengths-a combination of ripping guitars and irrepressible pop hooks, all delivered with the hyper-enthusiasm of a middle school cafeteria food fight. That every track is loaded front-to-back with sing/shout-worthy lyrics and earworm melodies is a testament to the band's commitment to the art form of pop songwriting. Opening track "Percolator" sets the tone-all power riffs and yo-yo-ing melodies playing against Hendricks' acrobatic vocals, which veer from gentle coo to an emphatic squeal:
I'm gonna die in the getaway car! I would try but it sounds too hard!
It's a vibe that carries throughout Guppy, a record that shares an undeniable kinship with 90's alt-rockers like Letters to Cleo and That Dog-bands that balanced melodicism, sugary vocals, and overdriven guitar turned up to 11. It's an aesthetic that Charly Bliss both embraces and improves upon in tracks like "Ruby" ("We actually wrote the guitar solo by sitting in a circle and passing the guitar around, each of us adding our own notes," says Fox) and "Glitter", the record's first single. "I wanted to make a song about being romantically involved with someone who makes you kind of hate yourself because they are so much like you," says Hendricks, "A fun song about complicated self-loathing that you could also dance around your bedroom to-that kind of sums us up as a band, actually."
"Pop music can actually be very subversive," she continues. "The lyrics that I'm most proud of on the record are me existing both in and out of this overgrown teenybopper feeling-feeling like everything I was going through was the most extreme thing that had ever happened to anyone ever. The songs are often about being totally in the throes of this stuff, but also being able to step out of it and make fun of myself. It's possible to write songs that really get at all of these dark feelings while also just being really fun to sing and dance to. You can be serious and also sing about peeing while jumping on a trampoline."
Guppy is a record that doesn't so much seek to reinvent the pop wheel so much as gleefully refine it. "People forget sometimes that expressing joy is just as important as examining despair," says Shure. "People need joy, especially right now. We're all about writing tight pop songs, but also giving people this super enthusiastic release. These songs are kind of the sound of expressing something that you can't really contain. These are songs you play really loudly when you need to freak out."
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SKATING POLLY: SKATING POLLY, a sister duo from Oklahoma made up of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, formed in 2009 after a jam session at the girls’ Halloween party. After recording their debut album "Taking Over the World" in their living room. Their sophomore album, "Lost Wonderfuls," (produced by Exene Cervenka of X and mixed by Kliph Scurlock of The Flaming Lips) was released in April, 2013. Their third album, "Fuzz Steilacoom," released March of 2014 was tracked by Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening at Dub Narcotic Studio.
Raised on ‘70s punk and early-‘90s alt-rock, Mayo (age 15) and Bighorse (19) mine inspiration from artists as disparate as Johnny Cash, The Ramones, Nirvana, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Bikini Kill and saturate their own songs with a raw energy reminiscent of their musical heroes. Skating Polly takes a minimalist approach to songwriting, with the two self-taught musicians (Bighorse plays guitar, Mayo plays a guitar/bass hybrid called a basitar, and both girls play drums and piano) crafting super-catchy melodies mainly by “messing around with our instruments and figuring out how to make cool noises,” according to Bighorse. But despite their stripped-down aesthetic, their songs contain a rich emotionalism that’s at turns brutally in-your-face, gut-wrenchingly tender, and irresistibly fun. A critic described their single ‘Alabama Movies’ as “an undeniable piece of work…a knockout punch that pummels your rib cage into shrapnel shards for all its thunderous percussion, palpable tension and Kelli Mayo’s piercing, possessed vocals.”
Along with earning the adoration of Cervenka (whom they befriended after attending one of the X singer’s 2010 solo shows and playing their demos on a cell phone), Skating Polly has found fans and supporters in Rosanne Cash, Kat Bjelland and Lori Barbero (Babes in Toyland), Sean Lennon, Donita Sparks (L7), Kate Nash, John Doe (X), legendary DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and the actor Viggo Mortensen. They have shared the stage with punk legends like Mike Watt, and hit the road with indie heavy-hitters Deerhoof, Kate Nash, Flaming Lips and Band of Horses. The stepsisters typically optimize their travel time by writing songs on their ukulele.
Prolific songwriters who are constantly recording when not on the road, the duo is finalizing two new releases for 2015. In the meantime, they are hitting the road with Perfect Pussy in March. In May, they will play overseas for the first time when they tour the UK with the reunited Babes in Toyland.
Both Mayo and Bighorse are intent on ignoring what’s fashionable and staying true to their passion for challenging music with long-lasting appeal. “The musicians we’re most inspired by are the ones who keep on going and going, who devote their entire lives to coming up with new and different stuff,” says Mayo. “A lot of times at our shows people will come up to us and tell us, ‘Keep on doing what you’re doing, don’t ever stop’ and we’re just like, ‘Yeah—we weren’t planning on ever stopping.”
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