Los Angeles singer and songwriter Christian Lee Hutson has shared ‘Age Difference’ today, a song from his upcoming album Quitters that allows Hutson to expand on the Los Angeles character song tradition of Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson. With a new video animated by Nick Slye accompanying it.
Said Slye of the animation: “1,100+ individual pencil drawings make up this 5 minute hand drawn dream. Christian’s style of lyricism and melody in ‘Age Difference’ lend themselves to vivid lucid dream-like imagery and create the euphoric feeling of falling fast asleep while listening to your favorite album, waking in a haze only remembering bits and pieces trying to decipher what was real and what was fantasy.”
The track concerns a character who is finding that they are on the dark side of their thirties. Hutson said, “There’s a specific type of an older man that I have encountered a lot in LA. The aging rocker who hasn’t had a long relationship and they are the McConaughey-like character who is dating a much younger girl, and they have just stopped progressing.” But Hutson refuses to pass judgment in a world filled with judgment. He is interested in describing the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be.
Produced by Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, Hutson’s new album Quitters presents characters who carry this golden light and sinister geography inside them. It’s a place where everything in the end gets blown away and paved over with something new, where even the ocean and fires are always whispering, “One day we’ll take it all back.” This is a Los Angeles in constant transition, where childhood is lost, where home is gone and can never be visited again. Yet Hutson’s world is also one of happy accidents, where doors are left open on purpose, hoping that someone new will walk through. In the end, what’s left are these songs created by some future spirit, written to comfort the person we are now.
Sonically on Quitters, Hutson pulled from a wide range of influences: the tight rhymes of John Prine, Bob Mehr’s book about the Replacements Trouble Boys, and Scott McClanahan’s auto-fiction The Sarah Book. It’s a recording that also feels like a sonic expansion from Hutson’s debut.
“We made Quitters all at once,” Hutson said of collaborating with Bridgers and Oberst. “We hadn’t seen each other for sixth months and this was the first time being in the room together again. It was a real familial feeling, working with the same people, playing with the same people where everyone gets so good at knowing one another’s tricks and are complimenting one another’s weird mistakes. My favorite records are when the guitar gets fucked up and then that becomes the recorded version. And it’s those accidents that make them special.”
Next month Hutson will join Bright Eyes on an East Coast and Midwest run of tour dates while also playing his own headlining shows in New York City and Los Angeles.
Pre-Order Quitters
1. Strawberry Lemonade
2. Endangered Birds
3. Rubberneckers
4. Sitting Up With A Sick Friend
5. Age Difference
6. Blank Check
7. Cherry
8. State Bird
9. Teddy’s Song
10. Black Cat
11. Creature Feature
12. OCDemon
13. Triple Axel
