Sounds Like This

Eric Hutchinson was supposed to be made a star by Madonna, or at least by her label, but after Maverick went bullet-bra-up in 2005 and Hutchinson went back to self-releasing his own albums, it turned out that all he needed was one prominent blogger on his side. After Perez Hilton waxed rhapsodic about Hutchinson's Sounds Like This on his celeb gossip blog in the summer of 2007, the Virginia-born, L.A.-based singer/songwriter suddenly shot into the Top Ten download chart at iTunes. It helps immensely that Hutchinson's third album is leaps and bounds beyond his previous two, That Could've Gone Better and the live EP ...Before I Sold Out: from the frisky piano-driven opener "OK, It's Alright with Me" onwards, Sounds Like This is a well-produced, cleverly arranged, and immensely catchy batch of AAA singer/songwriter pop songs. On the live EP, "Outside Villanova" sounded like the sort of faux-reggae soft rock fluff that Rupert Holmes might have released as a follow-up to "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," but in its full-band version, the kitsch aspects of the song are transformed into something closer to Ben Folds Five.