Charly Bliss’ Young Enough remains the album I’ve listened to the most this year, probably because Eva Hendricks sings about romantic love as though it’s oxygen and her songs make me feel like I’m back in high school, driving around in the suburbs late at night smoking and thinking I discovered music.
The album’s title track speaks of failed teen romance, with the booming chorus “We’re young enough / To believe it should hurt this much,” ten words conveying both the masochism of starry-eyed youthful interactions and the age-earned knowledge that love shouldn’t be so painful.
“This video is so magical and unlike anything we’ve ever made before,” Hendricks has shared in a press release. “I told [director] Henry Kaplan that I was feeling inspired by the video for “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, and he took that initial idea and made something totally beautiful and unique that’s as cinematic and sentimental as the song.”
In the video, Hendricks and her band play in a barren field that could be in the beginnings of winter or the first flush of early spring. Eva and a pair of girls wear long white dresses and flow around each other in interpretive dance moves; sometimes the camera shoots away from them, across meadows and through trees, and other times the girls run through clouds of smoke that materialize out of nowhere—perhaps generated by the song’s power and rage.
“Despite the fact that this video looks so dreamlike and serene, it was very physically draining to make,” Hendricks admitted. “The entire crew and anyone who wasn’t in a given shot had to sprint behind the steadicam op so that they wouldn’t be seen and ruin the effect of the giant open field where we were shooting. Between that, the choreography, racing to utilize available daylight, speeding up and slowing down the track to achieve the slow-motion and fast-motion effects, and trying to get perfect, full takes because there’s so few cuts, this was an extremely challenging video to make, but for that reason it’s also our favorite.”
Watch the video and see where Charly Bliss will be on tour below. Young Enough is out now via Barsuk Records.
^ w/ CHVRCHES
