Photo credits: Harrison Whitford<\/p>\n
Review by: Sophia Bartlett<\/p>\n
Christian Lee Hutson brought his pop paradise to Brighton Music Hall on January 30 with a stripped-down acoustic set. Huston joined the stage \u2013 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, \u201cParadise Pop. 10<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/i> \u2013 at precisely 9 p.m. with an acoustic guitar in hand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou guys don’t have to be quiet, I still have to tune,\u201d he said, entering the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n Alongside Hutson, he was accompanied by Odessa on violin. Hutson described her as \u201cbasically a rock icon, like God, a living legend, which is my opinion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hutson started the show with his most popular song, currently on Spotify, \u201cLose This Number\u201d<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>He followed this with \u201cCarousel Horses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Following \u201cCarousel Horses,\u201d<\/span> Hutson goes on to talk about a near-death experience he had two years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was at home, and I had Modern Family booted up on the TV, and I was like, \u2018Oh you know what would really sweeten the deal is I\u2019m going to go hit the weed vape.\u2019\u201d He then goes on to tell a descriptive story about how he ended up in what he described as a \u201cweed vape vortex memory train.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was like inception, it was fucking crazy and hard to follow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He wraps the story up by saying, \u201cBasically, this was all to say I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This experience was the inspiration for <\/span>After Hours <\/span><\/i>on his new album, which he played after this comedic insert. \u201cIt was an absolutely 100% true story. Nobody laugh. I don\u2019t know why there was so much laughing,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n This was the flow for much of the show. Hutson would play a couple of songs \u2013 primarily from his new album \u2013 and would use the time between songs to really interact with the audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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 \u2013 who happened to be at the barricade directly in front of Hutson \u2013 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was going to tell a beautiful story about how Boston comes together\u2026and how you guys look out for each other, but now I might have to reconsider.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPlay a song!\u201d someone yelled out from the back of the crowd at the end of the interaction, to which Hutson replied with a sarcastic attitude, \u201cAre you serious? You want me to play a song? I\u2019ll do it. I don\u2019t want to fight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n Given the acoustic nature of the set, many of the arrangements of songs were changed for acoustic guitar and violin only. Before playing \u201cRubberneckers,\u201d from his 2022 album \u201cQuitters,\u201d Hutson added that he never used to play it live acoustically because he didn\u2019t like the way it sounded, but he has since changed his mind.<\/span><\/p>\n 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. \u201cCarousel Horses\u201d<\/span> opens with strong drums and guitar on the recorded album but sounds drastically different with acoustic composition.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Hutson\u2019s hard-hitting lyrics stand out when performed acoustically, harboring a different kind of power than they do on the digital recording of his albums.<\/span><\/p>\n He ended the night playing \u201cForever Immortalized\u201d<\/span> from \u201cParadise Pop. 10\u201d during the encore, which was the first time Hutson played the song on tour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2013 set with two folding chairs, a Tiffany lamp, and a tapestry of a fictitious map labeled with all the locations mentioned in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21925,"featured_media":45980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525,1523,15],"tags":[33,215,2267,2268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45984,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45978\/revisions\/45984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}