A new album from Christian Lee Hutson is on the way. On Tuesday, the indie folk musician released the single “After Hours” and announced his album Paradise Pop. 10, which includes collaborations with Phoebe Bridgers, Katy Kirby, and Maya Hawke.
For Hutson, Paradise Pop, out Sept. 27, will serve as a “looking forward record” after feeling like living in Los Angeles was like a “memory graveyard.”
“Every corner becomes kind of haunted in a way, kind of dragging you out of the present. That’s what LA became like for me,” he said in a press release. “Spending so much time revisiting all these emotional landmarks ended up giving me the feeling that I was missing my life. Like it was passing me while I was looking the other way…. It felt really connected to the city.”
“I would spend half my life in the car, just completely on autopilot, re-living my life, from the beginning, on repeat every day,” he added.
Moving to New York City, where he made the record, allowed him to have a new outlook that made him feel alive. Hutson also revealed the LP’s track list, although it’s unclear which tracks feature guest vocals. Bridgers also helped produce the LP alongside Marshall Vore and Joseph Lorge. (Hutson co-wrote several tracks from Bridgers’ Punisher as well.)
Hutson explained that the album’s title is inspired by a real, “quiet and peaceful” town in Indiana that he would visit with his dad as a child.
“For years, he would say that if life ever got too crazy, we could go up there and start living our real lives; be the people we were always meant to be,” he said. “It occurred to me while making this record, that most of our lives we spend waiting to ‘be the people we were always meant to be’ I wanted to name this record after that town because it always symbolized an arrival to me.”
“It was the ‘when’ that I looked forward to as a child,” he added. “‘When’ it all made sense and I was finally who I was meant to be.”
Paradise Pop. 10 follows his sophomore album Quitters, which dropped in 2022, and his debut Beginners, which was released in 2020.
He spoke to Rolling Stone in 2020 about his close relationship with Bridgers. “To have someone you trust as much I trust her say to you, ‘The thing that you already did, that first thing, is good enough,” he said. “I still have a hard time being confident in what I’m doing, but I feel less like I’m performing a fake version of myself.”
Paradise Pop. 10 track list
1. Tiger
2. Carousel Horses
3. Autopilot
4. Water Ballet
5. Candyland
6. Flamingos
7. Fan Fiction
8. After Hours
9. Forever Immortalized
10. Skeleton Crew
11. Beauty School