Eric Church’s Bold New Album
Eric Church said of his eighth studio album, which he just dropped, “People keep asking me about the ‘vs.’ in the title, they want to know, is it a battle,…
Eric Church said of his eighth studio album, which he just dropped, “People keep asking me about the ‘vs.’ in the title, they want to know, is it a battle, Eric? And I say, yes. It is a battle. A battle for everything creative. That’s the whole reason I’m here in the first place.”
As one of country music’s most fearless storytellers, Church knows that it’s never been a more important time to be a leader in this kind of war. There’s no in-between in life, in art, in a world where a computer program can create a song in the blink of an eye, but we can’t seem to keep our children safe or our people connected. So, you can fall in line with the machine, or you can fight against it. And Church has only ever been a fighter.
The world of Evangeline vs. The Machine is one of experimentation, creativity and surprise. It is a collection of eight songs made to be listened to front-to-back, from an artist who has never given up hope on the power of the album. While suits in boardrooms are obsessed with manufacturing 30-second “songs” that go viral, prizing profits over creative freedom, Evangeline vs. The Machine refuses to surrender. It invites you to stay and fight with it.
For years, Church has become the gold standard for artists, in country music and far beyond, who refuse to play by the rules and insist on operating from their creative compass alone. He brought hard rock into country music with The Outsiders when everyone scoffed – and now it’s the roadmap for how to blend the two for this generation and beyond.
Eric noted “I’m basically pulling the curtain back and saying, ‘this is how I save myself.' I’ve been around a while now, and you know me and I know you, but I’m still bringing it back to the thing that lights a fire in me. And it’s still music.”
The whole album came together in four days, originally as a six-song album. “Bleed on Paper” was the first song recorded. It's a track that digs deep into Church’s own personal way of healing, in the best way he knows to fight: not just against the machine, but life’s darkest and most difficult moments, with song. “That's the way I've dealt with tragedy and triumph and hurt and devastation in my life,” he says. “With a pen in my hand and a guitar.”
The album ends on a cover of Tom Waits’ “Clap Hands,” a dystopian, wildly sonically experimental song. Church had been watching a movie on Netflix, and “Clap Hands” came on as the outro. He liked the anxiety of it, how it serves as a cautionary tale. Ominous, foreboding, a vision of the world if we keep going full force as we are: “Roar, roar, the thunder and the roar, son of a bitch is never comin' back here no more.”
Originally, it was going to end there, at six songs long. But at the end of the recording process, Church wasn’t quite satisfied. “Jay asked me, ‘What do you feel?’” Church recalls. “And I said, ‘Man, I love it, but it’s missing a little break from the tension and the drama. It’s missing just a little smile.’”
Thus, the rollicking “Rocket’s White Lincoln” was born, a solo Church write with some of his most vibrant lyrics and musical composition to match, and “Hands of Time,” which became the album’s opener.
Evangeline vs. The Machine is an album that battles for art in both its sheer existence and in the songs that it comprises: its stories and sonic landscapes paint a vivid picture of how essential it is to fight for creativity, to fight for music, to fight against the lure of pure commercialism or commerce or trends.
