Christian Lee Hutson w/ Allegra Krieger

‘Paradise Pop.10’ feels like you have found an unpublished collection of short stories, scrawled hastily on the sides of airsickness bags and cocktail napkins, each one detailing the life of the unwitting passenger fortunate enough to be seated next to Christian Lee Hutson on their flight to Fort Worth.

 

Anyone who has had the good fortune of falling in love with his first two records know that he is a keen observer of both himself and the world. From the first line of the first song on this new album, “Tonight your name is Charlotte / In a play within a play,” he reminds the listener that he is again weaving a web of autobiographical fiction. However, this time he has somehow both simplified and sharpened his style.

 

On ‘Paradise Pop. 10’ you will visit the CC Club in Minneapolis, a San Francisco stage production of a Tom Stoppard play, a bowling alley at the Jersey Shore, and a 2003 Subaru where two dads consider kissing each other after a game of pick-up basketball. Despite how broad the world Hutson creates is, the album gives you the impression that you are at an airport gate of sorts, and all these characters are gathered together, waiting for their lives to begin. They make light conversation with each other as their flight continues to be delayed…just another 15 minutes.

 

The record is somehow both literary and unpretentious, maybe best exhibited in the final track, “Beauty School”. Katy Kirby sings backing vocals on this surprising pop-punk tinged dose of poolside folk rock. “In a mirror universe / Time is moving in reverse / I’m gonna turn my life around / everything is different now.” The lyrics to this chorus call back to that of another song from the record; “Candyland.” “Dismantling my time machine / I’ll probably put back together for the final scene.” Again, Hutson gives the keen listener the impression that he is actively re-narrativizing his life. That he has wound up somewhere he never thought he would be and is trying to wrap his head around how not to ruin it.

 

‘Paradise Pop. 10’ takes its name from a real life “town” set deep in the woods of Parke County, Indiana, near where Hutson spent some of his childhood. There, just past the population sign, you’ll find a row of 5 houses on one side of the road and a cemetery on the other. It could feel like a limbo of sorts, like time is frozen; leaving room for your mind to wander either backward into your regrets of the past or forward into the future, into the unknown. But if you can learn to quiet these thoughts, you might realize, you aren’t waiting at all. There is no delay. You are living. You are here.