The ineffable magic of a flawlessly executed pop-rock song is impossible to understand, like the recipe for Doritos or the fact that Ted Cruz was ever elected to office. It’s just one of those things that adheres to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” Similarly, a great song can’t be explained—it just is.
The A.V. Club knew it when we saw “Ruby,” the new music video from New York-based quartet Charly Bliss. It’s a midtempo anthem of fuzzed-out excellence, hearkening back to the days of mid-’90s scruffy rock exuberance. Singer Eva Hendricks says of the song, “Around the time when I was writing these lyrics I developed an inexplicable fear of fainting, which became sort of debilitating. ‘Ruby’ was my way of thanking my therapist for more or less curing me of that phobia.” She also explains the video’s endearingly low-rent origins: “We were super inspired by public access television in general, but specifically the video of Ralph ‘Whistler’ Giese on the Kelly & Company show. We had the best time working with director Andrew Costa to create this bizarre, pastel, Midwestern world and enlisted our friends to be the zombie-townie audience.”
Charly Bliss is heading out on tour soon with fellow hyper-pop rock group Pup. Dates and tickets for the band’s summer jaunt are already available, so be sure to check out one of our favorite new acts when they roll through your town this June.