Fated to share Charli XCX’s fate of Most Likely To Get Lazily Misspelled By Music Sites…
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Alfred Soto: The granitic force of the opening guitar volley grabbed me, and when barely a minute later Eva Hendrick’s scream heralds a solo it’s obvious Charly Bliss has studied its influences: Imperial Teen, Fountains of Wayne, the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack.
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Crystal Leww: Between big acts like Paramore and throwbacks like Charly Bliss, who said pop punk was dead?
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Katherine St Asaph: As you know if you’ve tuned into the broken record that is me, one of music’s greatest unacknowledged genres is songs that either appeared or could have appeared on a teen-movie soundtrack from the late ’90s, where every other buzz band sounded like Veruca Salt or Letters to Cleo or a glossier version of 10 Things I Hate About You‘s “angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion.” This is a niche opinion, and this stuff took endless shit from critics — too poppy for the rockists, too girly for the male critics, too vocally gleeful for those who see “female vocals” as a genre, and no, the overlap isn’t totally 100%. Then it was swept away with the rest of alt-rock from the zeitgeist, settling in crevices — Warped Tour, Disney pop, children’s TV — that I’m sure the aforementioned critics see this as some sort of vindication, but are, not coincidentally, formative places for music taste. So perhaps a revival is upon us; other acts have come pretty close to the grunge end, but Charly Bliss remembers this exact sliver of the ’90s to glorious effect. “Percolator” isn’t the hookiest track on Guppy, but it’s the most sardonic: “Swimming in your pool, I am pregnant with meaning / could I be more appealing / writing slurs on the ceiling,” Eva Hendricks writes, skewering a dozen in-retrospect-dubious alt-rock videos and promo shoots in one verse.
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Micha Cavaseno: Did you know we really needed more bands that sorta kinda sound like stuff that was on 4AD in ’87 or [respective local college rock-focused indie] in ’95? It’s cool and all; singer Eva Hendricks def. has a somewhat iconoclastic voice with its childish tone which makes “Percolator”‘s eagerness to be clever all the more poignant. It’s just I swear I’ve heard 400 versions of this song.
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Thomas Inskeep: “Percolator” is nothing-special Weezer-esque pop-punk with grating, squeaky vocals from Eva Hendricks. Not only does this not percolate, it never even warms up.
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Anthony Easton: This would be a generic rock track without the slightly flat chipmunkesque vocal. I don’t know if that makes it interesting or annoying. At least it’s an aesthetic. Extra point for the scream, and I wish it went on longer.
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Iain Mew: There are lots of hints that “Percolator” is going to find a way off its predictable track, that it’s squeaking at the edges for escape, but they never amount to anything. Solid but unmemorable genre exercise it stays.
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