Christian Lee Hutson

Paradise Pop. 10 feels a lot like finding an unpublished collection of short stories, scrawled hastily on the sides of airsickness bags and cocktail napkins, each one detailing the life of the unwitting passenger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 earlier albums - 2020’s Beginners and 2022’s Quitters - knows that he is a keen observer of both himself and the world. Those albums earned the Californian singer-songwriter international attention, with Pitchfork noting that, “Few lyricists can paint such clear portraits in such a small space; even fewer can set them so naturally to such long-breathed melodies”, the UK’s Guardian commending his work as “small films in song, delicate and devastating, lingering long” and No Depression heralding the arrival of “an artist fully formed and wise beyond his years”. 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.