REVIEW: Christian Lee Hutson @ Brighton Music Hall 1/30

Photo credits: Harrison Whitford

Review by: Sophia Bartlett

Christian Lee Hutson brought his pop paradise to Brighton Music Hall on January 30 with a stripped-down acoustic set. Huston joined the stage – set with two folding chairs, a Tiffany lamp, and a tapestry of a fictitious map labeled with all the locations mentioned in his recent album release, “Paradise Pop. 10” – at precisely 9 p.m. with an acoustic guitar in hand. 

“You guys don’t have to be quiet, I still have to tune,” he said, entering the stage.

Alongside Hutson, he was accompanied by Odessa on violin. Hutson described her as “basically a rock icon, like God, a living legend, which is my opinion.”

Hutson started the show with his most popular song, currently on Spotify, “Lose This Number”. He followed this with “Carousel Horses.”

Hutson made the show feel very personable, directly talking with fans in the crowd and telling various stories throughout the show. He used the time he spent tuning his guitar for questions and answers and somewhat encouraged light heckling from the crowd.

Following “Carousel Horses,” Hutson goes on to talk about a near-death experience he had two years ago.

“I was at home, and I had Modern Family booted up on the TV, and I was like, ‘Oh you know what would really sweeten the deal is I’m going to go hit the weed vape.’” He then goes on to tell a descriptive story about how he ended up in what he described as a “weed vape vortex memory train.” 

“It was like inception, it was fucking crazy and hard to follow.”

He wraps the story up by saying, “Basically, this was all to say I’ve been to the other side, and I got to a place that is incredible. I can confirm I would go on any 700 club or news channel to talk about this to tell you that Heaven is, in fact, real, it’s amazing. There’s all kinds of stuff to look forward to. There’s Raising Canes.”

This experience was the inspiration for After Hours on his new album, which he played after this comedic insert. “It was an absolutely 100% true story. Nobody laugh. I don’t know why there was so much laughing,” he added.

This was the flow for much of the show. Hutson would play a couple of songs – primarily from his new album – and would use the time between songs to really interact with the audience. 

At one point, Hutson went on to describe how the show he last played in Boston, he watched people in the crowd get into a fight but made up at the end of the show. As it turned out, the entire story was that someone – who happened to be at the barricade directly in front of Hutson – had beer spilled on her at that show, causing the fight to break out. Both she and Hutson had a one-on-one conversation about this during the show. 

“I was going to tell a beautiful story about how Boston comes together…and how you guys look out for each other, but now I might have to reconsider.”

“Play a song!” someone yelled out from the back of the crowd at the end of the interaction, to which Hutson replied with a sarcastic attitude, “Are you serious? You want me to play a song? I’ll do it. I don’t want to fight.”

Hutson talked about how he always feels a connection to Boston when he plays shows in the city, and he spent a week at a Berklee summer program as a kid.

Given the acoustic nature of the set, many of the arrangements of songs were changed for acoustic guitar and violin only. Before playing “Rubberneckers,” from his 2022 album “Quitters,” Hutson added that he never used to play it live acoustically because he didn’t like the way it sounded, but he has since changed his mind.

One of the challenges that comes with acoustic shows is that, at a certain point, many of the songs sound very similar when played back to back. They also sound different from the recorded album, but not in a bad way at all. “Carousel Horses” opens with strong drums and guitar on the recorded album but sounds drastically different with acoustic composition.

The evening had a mellow and chill atmosphere, but it became harder to differentiate between songs, especially as someone not fully immersed in the album. His insertion of comedic bits and crowd interaction made the show memorable, but it was also used to prevent the show from becoming mundane.

However, Hutson’s hard-hitting lyrics stand out when performed acoustically, harboring a different kind of power than they do on the digital recording of his albums.

He ended the night playing “Forever Immortalized” from “Paradise Pop. 10” during the encore, which was the first time Hutson played the song on tour.