Video: Christian Lee Hutson, ‘Age Difference’

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Christian Lee Hutson (Photo by Michael Delaney)

Christian Lee Hutson has stayed busy since the release of his 2020 album, “Beginners.” He issued a trilogy of cover collections (called “The Version Suicides,” of course) throughout 2021, and he somehow finds time to make cameos at all his friends’ shows, whether he’s backing Lucy Dacus with Phoebe Bridgers, Bartees Strange and Tomberlin at Brooklyn Steel or duetting with Fenne Lily closer to home at the Highland Park Ebell and Zebulon.

Now the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter is rolling out his sophomore album for Anti- Records, and today he released the album’s third single, “Age Difference.” It shows Hutson at his most spare and melodic as he assumes the character of a fading rockstar who’s “on the dark side of my 30s” and says things like “I think I was suicidal before you were even born” and has a funny/not-funny “impression of John Malkovich critiquing food in prison.” A trumpet (played by Nate Walcott) is the only thing that backs Hutson’s dreamy, bare-bones guitar-and-bass arrangement.

“There’s a specific type of an older man that I have encountered a lot in L.A.,” Hutson says. “The aging rocker who hasn’t had a long relationship and they are the McConaughey-like character who is dating a much younger girl, and they have just stopped progressing.”

“Age Difference” follows Hutson’s previous singles “Rubberneckers” and “Strawberry Lemonade,” and arrives with a hand-crafted visual courtesy of illustrator Nick Slye.

“1,100-plus individual pencil drawings make up this five-minute hand drawn dream,” Slye says of the production. “Christian’s style of lyricism and melody in ‘Age Difference’ lend themselves to vivid lucid dream-like imagery and create the euphoric feeling of falling fast asleep while listening to your favorite album, waking in a haze only remembering bits and pieces trying to decipher what was real and what was fantasy.”

“Quitters” — produced by Bridgers and Conor Oberst — is out April 1 via ANTI- Records. You can pre-order it here and catch Hutson headlining the Highland Park Ebell on April 29.

||| Watch: The video for “Age Difference”

||| Live: Christian Lee Hutson plays the High Park Ebell Club on April 29 (tickets).

||| Previously: “Rubberneckers” and “Strawberry Lemonade,” “Talk,” “Northsiders”