Some say nostalgia is wasted on the young, but that doesn’t stop it being a good subject for songs. Jackson Browne wrote These Days, the 1967 classic of the genre, at 16. Adele’s weepiest ballad on 25 was When We Were Young. Christian Lee Hutson is an antique 29, but his new album, Beginners, picks apart the past with similar classicism, through intimate snapshots of early adulthood.
Ten years ago, the Californian Hutson was in the Driftwood Singers, a close-harmony country duo. He then released two solo albums (both now unavailable online), before meeting Phoebe Bridgers, who is now his producer and chief collaborator. Hutson’s style today is sensitive and unshowy; his older voice has some of the curious tenderness of Elliott Smith. The influence of the early 70s solo albums of Paul Simon are present in Hutson’s guitar-playing and his lyrics, which are wistful, but with an edge.
Northsider is about the bravado of youth (“said that we were communists/ And thought that we invented it/ Morrissey apologists/ Amateur psychologists”). A parental figure is quietly destroyed in Talk, while Unforgivable mourns a relationship with a neatly placed curse (“We had a pretty good run/ But I just can’t fucking do it any more”). There are also girls with whom he’s missing ferries, watching storms roll in, saying they want to be more than friends (“it’ll never be this good again”). These are small films in song, delicate and devastating, lingering long.
