Bliss Just In: the five year hiatus is officially over! NYC’s premier power pop/indie rock quartet Charly Bliss makes their triumphant return following 2019’s “Young Enough” with their lead single “Nineteen” off their upcoming third studio record. Accompanied by a nostalgic music video that encapsulates the late teenage years of cross country and heartbreak, the new track vaults towards the finish line teary-eyed, but with sober-minded clarity. Hindsight is 50/50, after all, and the stakes are never higher than when you are young and in love. A sonic continuation of where the sophomore album took the signature Bliss sound, the punchier days of “Guppy” feel but a far rearview memory. The band and its members have done a lot of growing up in the years since their 2017 debut effort, and that truth persists both in the instrumentation and the songwriting.

Frontwoman Eva Hendricks, prolific poet of our time that she is, never tires of elevating her craft. Such is the case with “Nineteen” – a mighty furthering of the band’s jangly palette as told through reminiscing on a former love that felt like the weight of the world at the time. “I was alive, and you were mine,” she’s reminded, while accompanied by simple finger-plucked piano. The tenderness of burgeoning teenage affection comes in moments of shared simplicity – staying up late, finishing the last of the diner fries while bathed in fluorescent lights. And yet, the pain that follows from the undoing of an easygoing love often shatters the softest of hearts: “And it was awful/Hurt me so bad,/We were monsters/Strangers in an empty night.” In the face of devastating hurt, some are resigned to do anything to mend what was; “C’mon honey, break my heart,” Hendricks pleads. A revelation spills from her lips and births the name of the coming summer record – “I could run forever but I wouldn’t get far.”

A sumptuous sax solo follows the sorrow of a ring lost in Georgia; perhaps the two could have been together forever, but that’s often the love-addled hopes of being nineteen doing the talking. A decade since their eyes first aligned, Eva wonders aloud: “What were you thinking back when you met me?”

This first taste provides a full-bodied experience of the grit and raw power of a Bliss more thoughtful and mature than ever. As seen with the music video, love can often feel like a runner’s high, but the downside is that some of us crash out well before a victory lap. With Sad Girl Summer nigh, this single will undoubtedly be spun on the “sidewalks in summer heat.” Charly Bliss’ third studio album, “Forever,” releases August 16, 2024.