Kevin Bronson on November 30th, 2020

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Singer-songwriter Brooks Hudgins was born in Texas, reared in L.A., studied film in Edinburgh, Scotland (where he not only earned a degree but some notoriety as a techno DJ) and made his debut album in a Brooklyn basement and a New Jersey studio.

That album, “Drive Thru Communion” (out Dec. 11), filters Hudgins’ storytelling through his little-bit-country bedroom pop. Fans of the bittersweet miserablism of Eels, Father John Misty and Butch Bastard might find kinship in Hudgins’ tragicomic characters and scenarios.

“Only Fans” memorializes the life of a cam girl; “405 South” crests after wandering through the valley of a breakup; and “Gas Station Viagra” finds a mysterious protagonist in a young woman named Lola. “Lola is actually a real person,” Hudgins told Under the Radar, where the track premiered. “I wonder if I’ll ever find her again. Maybe she’ll read this. It wasn’t her real name obviously, but I met her my first time at a strip club in London. It was super bizarre, and she started talking to me and turns out she was my year in university. We went outside and had a cigarette. She said she had a bunch of student debt and was paying it off then had plans to go to Bali. Then this bald guy walked out and pointed at her and she had to go. I invited her to Corsica studios to see “Chaos in the CBD” the next night with us, but never saw her again.

“So I guess these songs are fictionalized to an extent, but blooming out of a kind of sad truth … that there’s all these people out there living intricate and complicated and interesting lives that you’ll never see again.”

||| Stream: “Gas Station Viagra,” “405 South,” “February” and “Only Fans”