I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: April 2, 2019] Christian Lee Hutson

I had not heard of Christian Lee Hutson before this show. I had no idea that he was in the Better Oblivion Community Center band (multi-instrumentalist) or that he has written songs for BOCC and boygenius (and that Phoebe Bridgers was producing his album).  So he has a lot of connections in this Community.

He looks rather Southern California.  With his sweeping hair and good looks he could be an extra on the new Veronica Mars series).  But he sings in a lovely accent-less voice. His voice and his guitar lines are clean and classic.  His melodies sound ageless, aside from his more contemporary lyrics (like on Northsiders):

We were so pretentious then
Didn’t trust the government
Said that we were communists
And thought that we invented it

Morrissey apologists
Amateur psychologists
Serial monogamists
We went to different colleges

Mostly he plays a beautiful clean guitar line and sings with his gentle voice.  He also does some nice finger picking.

But he’s also a light-hearted and funny fellow.  His stories about his songs were engaging and often funny.  And then he told us about the song “Let’s Get the Old Band Back Together.”  He told us that it would make a lot more sense with some background information.  And then he proceeded to bring out Lala Lala to sing with him.  He told us that the four of them formed a band called Slugs and they played just the one song.  For this song the bassist and drummer of Lala Lala switched instruments and they played this funny song about a friend of Christians’ who left a band.  The band had been together for some fifteen years but never played a show.  And now he was back looking to play with them again.  It was a long set up, but it was worth it.

I was delighted to see him appear not only with Better Oblivion but also with Lala Lala.  I’d definitely check out his album.

I don’t have a setlist.