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Sometime last year, Eric Hutchinson came to a strange realization: he kept daydreaming about high-school. It had been over twenty 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\\u2019s teenage years were filled with the type of alienation and private angst recognizable to most anyone who\\u2019s ever been 16. Twenty-plus years later, the singer was finally ready to write about it. The result: Class of 98, a 90\\u2019s alt-rock-inspired autobiographical record that chronicles the singer-songwriter\\u2019s adolescence.\\u201cIt took me a long time to understand myself,\\u201d Hutchinson says. \\u201cWriting 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\\u2019t this person want to be around me? Why don\\u2019t I understand myself?\\u201dAfter experimenting with a series of genres like Americana/soul and jazz on his last few albums ModernHappiness and Before and After Life, the singer-songwriter turned to the pop-punk alt-rock of his youth for the riff-heavy Class of 98, taking inspiration from bands like Green Day, Oasis, and Weezer. \\u201cThat music is in my guitar DNA,\\u201d says the singer. \\u201cI love 90\\u2019s music, and this type of sound was so formative for me.\\u201d To help round out his sound, Hutchinson recruited Justin Sharbono (formerly of Soul Asylum) to offer his distinctive (and period appropriate) guitar playing on the album. Hutchinson also enlisted the sonic guidance and mixing talents of Paul Kolderie, who\\u2019d made great 90\\u2019s records with bands like Radiohead, Hole, The Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom and The Pixies. For Hutchinson, taking such an imaginative leap with a concept as specifically personal of Class of 98was an artistic risk he knew he needed to take. \\u201cI don\\u2019t think people want me to keep making the same record, as much as anyone might think they do,\\u201d he says. The opening track \\u201cRock Out Tonight\\u201d sets the scene with a narrative that evokes the high-drama restlessness of a group of teenagers aimlessly driving around the suburbs in a Ford Taurus. The song, says the singer, is about \\u201cwanting to be rebellious, but having no idea how to do so.\\u201dMeanwhile, cinematic songs like \\u201cDrunk at Lunch\\u201d and \\u201cCooler Than You\\u201d show a darker underbelly of Hutchinson\\u2019s high-school introversion, echoing a theme that the singer-songwriter has been tackling in his work ever since releasing his chart-topping debut LP Sounds Like This, in 2007. \\u201cI\\u2019m always interested in asking questions in my songs: who\\u2019s cool, who gets to decide, and where do I fit into all of that?\\u201d he says.
But the emotional centerpiece of Hutchinson\\u2019s latest, and the song that was the most difficult to write, is \\u201cMy Old Man,\\u201d written in the wake of his father\\u2019s passing, after years of living with Myotonic dystrophy. More than anything else on the album, the deeply personal song gets at the album\\u2019s central tension of writing from the teenage perspective while simultaneously embodying the adult point of view. \\u201cI didn\\u2019t necessarily get along with my dad in high school,\\u201d says the singer. \\u201cWe were in different places in our lives and he had different things to worry about. I tried to sing this song from my perspective back then as well as my perspective now, where I\\u2019ve made peace with him.\\u201dTaken as a whole, Class of 98arrives as Hutchinson\\u2019s most playful yet distinctive work, one that will surely resonate with longtime fans of the singer\\u2019s pop-rock hits like \\u201cRock & Roll,\\u201d \\u201cTell the World,\\u201d and \\u201cWatching You Watch Him.\\u201dFor Hutchinson, the experience of delving back into his high-school youth helped him learn a lot: about his upbringing, about parenthood, and about himself. \\u201cI like the 90\\u2019s way better,\\u201d he says, \\u201cwhen I\\u2019m not living in them.\\u201d