“If you wanna rock out tonight, I can pick you up in my Ford Taurus.” So begins Eric Hutchinson’s Class of 98 — and he means it. This 10-track throwback finds the singer-songwriter revisiting his adolescence — and channeling the sounds of classic alt-rock and power-pop outfits like Weezer, along with more contemporary nostalgists like Fountains of Wayne. Either way, you oughta take him up on the ride.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Sometime last year, Eric Hutchinson came to a strange realization: he kept daydreaming about high school. It had been over 20 years since the singer-songwriter had graduated from Montgomery Blair High School, yet his adolescent dreams, hopes, fears, anxieties and emotions the singer faced as a kid began flooding back; suddenly, the singer felt transported back into his teenage self. Growing up in suburban Maryland, Hutchinson’s teenage years were filled with the type of alienation and private angst recognizable to most anyone who’s ever been 16. Twenty-plus years later, the singer was finally ready to write about it. The result: Class of 98, a ’90s alt-rock-inspired autobiographical record that chronicles the singer-songwriter’s adolescence. “It took me a long time to understand myself,” Hutchinson says. “Writing this record allowed me to get into the time machine and go back and look around my old life and report from my current point of view. That was fun. The problems were waiting for me: Who likes me? Why doesn’t this person want to be around me? Why don’t I understand myself?”
