Saturday evening, Charly Bliss brought a load of holiday happiness and humor with a special live stream event playfully titled It’s a Blissful Life. Bringing the same cheeky hilarity and light-hearted comedy that the band brought with their parody show, Ignorance Is Bliss, the Brooklyn-born four-piece put together a A Christmas Carol-inspired Zoom skit and debuted their new holiday song in collaboration with PUP.

“This feels very true to CB [Charly Bliss] form,” comments bassist Dan Shure on the show, which kicks off with an acapella, Pentatonix cover of a cover of “Carol of the Bells.” It’s a decent performance, if a little overdone and slightly non harmonious, but frontwoman Eva Hendricks isn’t having it with the tonedeaf holiday cheer. The singer shuts down the performance mid-way and begins ranting about the inappropriate nature of a carefree holiday song amidst national catastrophe. Lead guitarist Spencer Fox isn’t on the same page, arguing that the holidays are all about kindness and sharing and…“Capitalism!” Eva cuts in. One thing leads to another, in true cinematic rising action, and Eva finds herself wishing Charly Bliss had never existed in the first place!

What follows is a humorous introduction to the flamboyant, bald-headed and blunt character of God, complete with a virtual green-screen background of the heavens. After complaining about the year’s events, God tells Eva, “You think COVID-19 was a sign that it’s time for your band to break up? We’ve just been trying to kill Rudy Giuliani!” The humorous, holy archetype takes Eva, in full Scrooge form, on a four-part venture into an alternate reality where Charly Bliss never existed, beginning with Dan and his one-man show, “The Spirit of Daddy: Winds of Change.” Dan’s would-have-been life is actually just an awkward, cringeworthy monologue involving a song coming out to his father, some hefty mommy issues and dancing to EDM as a coping method. It gets progressively worse, but Eva sums it up acutely: “This is…not good.”

Next up is Spencer, and Eva watches in horror as God shows a would-be clip of Fox as a YouTube vlogger whose strange fixation is maintaining his reputation as the voice actor who played ‘Dash’ in the 2004 The Incredibles film (which he really did!). Except he goes by “Spenny” and wears a low-cut tank top and a backwards baseball cap, so….well, I’ll stop the visual there. 

Last but not least is drummer Sam, Eva’s brother, whose alternate reality looks like a fascination with “contemporary, white dad rock” and a life in their mom and dad’s basement. Eva is almost as speechless as she watches her own reality, wherein the 2017 Charly Bliss roaring rock song “Percolator” is not a hit, but rather just…really, really awful, and performed in an aged theater room to a crowd of near-zero. 

This God is pretty easy to please, though, as Eva’s tearful regret is enough to return her to her bandmates’ Zoom call. The happy ending calls for a celebration; luckily, Charly Bliss and PUP teamed up to give just that. It’s pop-punk, it’s relatable, and “It’s Christmas and I Fucking Miss You.”

Eva’s sour-and-sweet candy-like voice comes together pleasantly with PUP’s Stefan Babcock, whose tone is reminiscent of the early-2000s pop-punk scene. “I should get drunk/ we should call it/ ‘cuz this whole year’s been dogshit, anyway,” Babcock sings in his verse, which is backed up by a swift drum barrage. The melody is accompanied by jingling bells in addition to an emphatic electronic guitar riff, and the lyrics are just angry enough to make the track a solid competitor for this year’s holiday charts. 

The performance is cheerful and joyfully self-deprecating. Basically, it’s the perfect 2020 christmas song. “Not gonna lie, this is my favorite song we’ve ever written,” Eva says about the track, which is available this week on all streaming platforms. And if you’re up for some wry holiday fun, you can stream It’s A Blissful Life throughout the rest of the holiday season. 

There’s just one question left for Charly Bliss: when is vlogger Spencer Fox’s The Incredibles theme song trap remix dropping? Just kidding…obviously.