Consumer Guide Album

Charly Bliss: Young Enough [Barsuk, 2019]
It's been a while since a new power-pop machine has operated at this pitch of tuneful intensity. Eva Hendricks never lets her breathy childishness undercut her determined professionalism, and she doesn't live in a catchy bubble--the lead "Blown to Bits" catalogs satisfactions, distractions, and incidentals ripe for extinction in a world where an unnamed "he," as "Bleach" puts it, "could destroy everything that I like." Still, something about these songs feels pat, even unempathetic sometimes. Beneath their punk-informed momentum and textured-chrome surface are self-realization precepts about believing in who you are and accepting your own insecurities that mean more to well-fixed postcollegiates still figuring shit out than to those all too preoccupied with earning a living. These are legitimate power-pop themes. But spiritually they only take you so far. A-