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New Christian Lee Hutson video: Rubberneckers

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Video: Christian Lee Hutson – “Rubberneckers”

Directed by Zoe Donahoe and Adam Sputh. From Quitters, due April 1 on Anti-.

Does this song sample Wilco’s “Born Alone” or just interpolate it? Either way, it’s a good use of a great riff.

I really like Christian Lee Hutson. He’s about 20 years younger than me but he reminds me of people I knew growing up. He just seems like somebody I would’ve hung out with. His lyrics are sad and funny and nostalgic and a little hopeful. And his melodic sensibilities and delivery reveal an appreciation of Elliott Smith, which gets me every time. I’ve been a fan since the first time I heard “Northsiders” with its references to Morrissey apologists and pretentious college kids.

Anti- is calling “Rubberneckers” the lead single from the upcoming album Quitters, so does that mean “Strawberry Lemonade” — released in November — was a standalone single? Doubtful. But whatever. Who knows what “lead single” means anyway. It can mean whatever you want it to mean, I guess, or it can mean nothing at all. Who cares, the song is good and the video is silly.

Hutson says, “The last time I danced was at the 8th grade social and it was mainly just swaying to ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ but I wanted to showcase what a natural, gifted dancer I am.” Absolutely!

If you tell a lie for long enough
Then it becomes the truth.
I am gonna be okay someday
With or without you.

There’s nothing truer than the lies we tell ourselves.

Christian Lee Hutson: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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New Christian Lee Hutson video: Strawberry Lemonade

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Video: Christian Lee Hutson – “Strawberry Lemonade”

Directed by Waley Wang. Single out now on Anti-.

Woo hoo, new Christian Lee Hutson! His 2020 album Beginners was one of the highlights of a miserable year.

Warning! This video might make you barf if you have issues with merry-go-rounds…

While many of the best songs on Beginners featured straightforward narratives, “Strawberry Lemonade” is more impressionistic. But even if it’s impossible to decipher a literal meaning out of the lyrics, you can definitely feel what Hutson is putting across.

Everything is an accident
God’s truth is elastic
We sent a man to the moon and back again
Strapped into a trash can.

Hutson says, “’Strawberry Lemonade’ is a series of vignettes about memory, letting go and holding on. I remember talking to a friend, around the time that I wrote it, about the relentless repackaging of 1960’s culture; so some of that ended up in there. […] I want people to feel like it’s okay: we’re all here fucking up all the time; we’re all just learning and living, and it’s going to be all right. I don’t even know if I fully believe that, but it’s the voice I always wished I had in my life.”

Christian Lee Hutson: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.
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New Boy Scouts: That’s Life Honey

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Video: Boy Scouts – “That’s Life Honey”

Directed by Jake Nokovic. from Wayfinder, available October 1 on Anti-.

You know a song is going to be good if its video is shot on a boat. That’s just a fundamental rule of rock criticism. “That’s Life Honey” is no exception.

If I were to die by volcano
I’d be laughing at the irony
Bottle it up and you will surely explode
You’d say why didn’t you tell me?

That’s funny. I appreciate the callback to Elliott Smith. Not that Smith coined the phrase, but I’d be shocked if Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick wasn’t intentionally referencing the XO highlight.

Vick says, “This song is about trying?to make light of a shitty situation. Having a circumstance that sucks, like wanting to go to therapy but you can’t afford it, and fantasizing about a world where you could get a chip implanted or have some surgery that rewires your brain and resolves you from whatever problems you have. This song is mostly my attempt at writing a tragicomedy, combined with true experiences of figuring out how to open up to people.”

Boy Scouts: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.
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New Madi Diaz: Nervous

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Video: Madi Diaz – “Nervous”

Directed by Jordan Bellamy. Single out now on Anti-.

Cool song with a beefy guitar tone and conversational vocal delivery. That’s my jam.

The line “I have so many perspectives I’m losing perspective” reminds me of the old Steve Taylor lyric: “You’re so open-minded that your brain leaked out.” Sometimes I miss being a kid who is absolutely convinced that I know everything about everything. I made a crack the the other day about losing my critical faculties but I’m not sure it was a joke. It used to be so easy to dismiss stuff out of hand, without putting any real effort into it. All the stuff I hated so thoroughly as a 16 year old (e.g., Grateful Dead, Whitney Houston, NASCAR, tofu), I can appreciate now and some of it I even like.

When you can no longer bring yourself to hate things, how are you supposed to define what you actually like?

I don’t know if any of that has anything to do with what Madi Diaz is singing about.

Diaz says, “You know when you hold a mirror up to a mirror and you get an infinite amount of reflections from every angle? That’s what ‘Nervous’ is about. It’s when you’re in a loop of looking at yourself from every vantage point until you’re caught up in your own tangled web of bullshit. It’s about catching yourself acting out your crazy and you’re finally self aware enough to see it but you’re still out of your body enough and curious enough to watch yourself do it.”

“Nervous” is her third single for Anti-. No word yet on a full-length album.

Madi Diaz: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.
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New Christian Lee Hutson: Betty

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Video: Christian Lee Hutson – “Betty”

From The Version Suicides, Vol. 1, out now on Anti-.

Christian Lee Hutson’s Beginners was one of my favorite albums of 2020. Taylor Swift’s folklore was another. In a bit of pop culture synchronicity Hutson has just released an e.p. of cover songs, including a version of Swift’s song sung from the point of view of the boy in the love triangle that is explored in a trio of folklore songs along with “Cardigan” and “August.” I can geek out all day on these three songs but I’ll spare you.

“Betty” is my favorite though. It’s the one that sounds most like a real teenager. The other two songs have references to “downtown bars” and bottles of wine, but the narrator of “Betty” talks about homeroom and his skateboard and dances in gyms and it just sounds like a dopey kid who messed up and really, really regrets it.

But if I just showed up at your party
Would you have me? Would you want me?
Would you tell me to go fuck myself
Or lead me to the garden?

In The Long Pond Studio Sessions documentary Swift says something about how she’s written so many songs wishing the boy would apologize and with “Betty” she finally gets her apology. I sincerely hope Betty gives him another chance. He’s only 17, after all. He’s doesn’t know anything.

Hutson plays it straight. He doesn’t amp up the drama but he can’t bury it. On The Version Suicides, Vol. 1 he also covers Abba and Vanessa Carlton. I’m a sucker for acoustic folkie covers of pop songs. Not sure that “Betty” required this re-imagining but it’s not bad. Just not particularly necessary. The original is perfect as it is.

Christian Lee Hutson: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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New M. Ward video: Violets For Your Furs

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Video: M. Ward – “Violets For Your Furs”

Directed by Holly Andres. From Think Of Spring, out now on Anti-.

M. Ward has always been an interesting interpreter of older material. Solo and as half of She and Him, Ward has sprinkled in covers of classics and standards throughout his career. So it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that he’s doing a tribute to Billie Holiday. It’s a little quirky to cover 1958’s Lady in Satin album in its entirety, but why not?

At the end of her career Holiday wanted to record a “pretty album, something delicate” so she enlisted easy listening bandleader Ray Ellis to arrange songs to match her voice that by this point had been damaged by years of substance abuse. Ward forgoes orchestration altogether and sticks to vocals and guitar. And, not surprisingly, it’s lovely.

He talked to Rolling Stone about what drew him to this album: “I heard Lady in Satin at a shopping mall. I had no idea what it was. Her voice sounded like distorted electric guitar paired with these really beautiful string arrangements. It was like something I’d never heard. The whole experience was kind of like a dream. […] I’ve been arranging these songs for 10 years, recording them for a couple of years. I was experimenting with different tunings to get the songs right for my voice. I was just trying my best to take my favorite elements of Ray Ellis’ arrangements and it took a lot of time.”

Anyone expecting Rod Stewart-style songbook schmaltz will be disappointed.

Proceeds from the album go to PLUS1 for Black Lives.

M. Ward: web, twitter, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Continue reading New M. Ward video: Violets For Your Furs →

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New Christian Lee Hutson video: Talk

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Video: Christian Lee Hutson – “Talk”

Directed by Han-Su Kim. From Beginners, due May 29 on Anti-.

As a global pandemic threatens to kill off an entire generation of old people, what better timing for Christian Lee Hutson to release some literal dad rock?

I’m pretty busy
So please forgive me
If I forget to
Not forgive you

I see a lot of my friends struggling to deal with their parents as they get old and weird and their souls are corrupted by talk radio and Fox News. Our folks left us with a lot of their baggage and it hardly seems fair for them to keep piling it on, decade after decade.

I will no longer grieve you
when I have to see you
it’s no use denying
you belong to the dying
And I couldn’t care less
Life’s just a real slow death
Yep, that’s what I was taught

But ultimately Hutson admits, “Okay, so I care a lot.” They’re old. They’ll be dead soon enough. Cut them some slack and try to make the best of the time you have with them. Right?

It won’t be long before our kids think of us that way, if they don’t already. Hopefully they’ll be kind to us and overlook our inevitable, impending kookiness. It’s as tough to be a good parent as it is to be a good kid.

Christian Lee Hutson: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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New Christian Lee Hutson video: Lose This Number

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Video: Christian Lee Hutson – “Lose This Number”

Directed by Zoe Donahoe and Adam Sputh. From Beginners, due May 29 on Anti.

Wow. So Christian Lee Hutson’s “Northsiders” blew my mind when I first heard it last year. It’s one of those rare songs that feels as if it’s been written directly for you. Like, dude, were you reading my journals from college?

That single appeared as a one-off, but a year later it looks like he has been picked up by Anti- Records, who will be releasing his debut album in May. Beginners was produced by Phoebe Bridgers.

Unlike “Northsiders,” the new single is not specifically about my teenage life, but it’s still haunting and very real. “I think ‘Lose This Number’ is about someone fixating on the past, wishing they could go back and change things,” says Hutson.

Bobby helped me track you down cause
I just saw your name in the paper
You said, “Of course that reminded you of me
Don’t you know that’s how a name works?”

That’s funny. But it gets more serious immediately.

I know you don’t have to forgive me
Hell, you probably shouldn’t
I got scared and I took off
I wanted to try but I couldn’t

Hutson’s gift is the ability to disguise poetic heaviness in conversational lyrics and straightforward, unembellished delivery. I can’t wait to hear the rest of his album.

Christian Lee Hutson: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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New Mavis Staples video: We Get By

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Video: Mavis Staples – “We Get By” (ft. Ben Harper)

From We Get By, due May 24 on Anti.

Mavis Staples is a great American hero. I want her to adopt me so she can be my kid’s grandma. She is the absolute best.

“We Get By” is the title track from her new album featuring songs written and produced by musician and skater Ben Harper.

Mavis’ optimism is inspiring. If Mavis Staples can still believe that things are going to get better, who the fuck am I to sit around moping and grumping about the sorry state of the world? “It’s what I love to do,” she says in the intro to this video. “To sing a song that’s going to help somebody, to sing a song that’s going to bring somebody closer.”

Thank you, Mavis. Your songs do help. And your Vans are super dope, too!

Mavis Staples: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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New Cass McCombs video: Sleeping Volcanoes

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Video: Cass McCombs – “Sleeping Volcanoes”

From Tip of the Sphere, out now on Anti-.

Man, what a great song. It’s not easy to write serious music that still has elements of whimsy and surprise, especially when you’re maybe mired in the daily drama overload of life in Americ-a-lago.

The video for “Sleeping Volcanoes” is just as strange and engaging as the song itself. The one take-away I get, and it’s a lesson I should never forget for even a moment, is that we need to get out in the woods more. All of us. As often as possible.

Cass McCombs: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.