With Rolling Stone celebrating Eric Church for “the most ambitious, vulnerable album of his career” in the lead review of the May print issue as Evangeline vs. The Machine arrived, May 2, the 10-time GRAMMY nominee embarks on what is perhaps the most radical chapter of his singular career spanning nearly two decades of rule-breaking and risk-taking music.
“People keep asking me about the ‘vs.’ in the title,” Church notes of his eighth studio album, named among today’s best releases by NPR’s “All Things Considered.” “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 a 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. He dropped Mr. Misunderstood on fans’ doorsteps without any warning; he fought scalpers to make sure Church Choir members could get tickets to his shows. When the machine demands we go left, he pushes right. When it fails, he shows up.
Church wrote the song “Evangeline” a few years back, before the album as it arrives now had been conceived. It opens with a declaration: “Still the man that I was, just a little more grey, a little more stay, a little less sting in my buzz. Still chasing a song between the verse and a bridge, I know life is just a chorus we sing along.” It is an ode to the muse that moves us, and the way that art and music bring us out of the darkness, if we let it.
“I’m basically pulling the curtain back and saying, ‘this is how I save myself,’” Church says. “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.”
For Evangeline vs. The Machine, Church, producer Jay Joyce and longtime manager John Peets made sure that no old habits or tried-and-true techniques would keep things stale. Having no involvement in pre-production – as has usually been his custom – Church arrived to a full orchestra at the studio, ready to respond in real time with three or four takes, at most. He loved every second of being surrounded by so many musicians of all disciplines, forming a wall of sound that also included longtime collaborator Joanna Cotten and a backing choir.
“They were all able to contribute to the color of the canvas,” Church says. “They’re not just echoing what you’re singing, they’re playing a role in contributing to it. For a songwriter, that’s so inspiring.” At one point Church looked around, and he felt like he was in the middle of a movie set. “It was just so different than anything I’d ever done, so theatrical and cinematic. I just loved it.”
The whole thing came together in four days, originally as a six-song album. “Bleed on Paper” was the first recorded, 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.”
Church shows next what that looks like in real time: “Johnny” was written in the wake of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. He sat in the parking lot the following morning after dropping his boys off at a nearby school, overcome by the tragedies in our world and how little we do to prevent them. Inspired by the timing of Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” coming through his speakers, he drove home and started writing immediately, using music as a salve to soothe those wounds. It all hinges on a central line: “machines control the people, and the people shoot at kids.” Phones, computers, misleading social media, a poisoned political climate. Suddenly, this is about far more than just art. It’s about survival.
The next songs to come, “Storm in Their Blood” and “Darkest Hour,” pick up where that idea leaves off. Church used “Darkest Hour” as a way to raise awareness and money for North Carolina after Hurricane Helene in late 2024, releasing the song ahead of the album and donating all of his publishing royalties to support a more resilient future for his home state. Still, the song is restlessly creative: packed with flute, French horn and trombone – not instrumentation typical of a country single. It creates the lead-in for the all-important “Evangeline,” where the interplay between Church, the choir and the orchestra lands in a musical dialogue, communicating with words, sounds, feeling.
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. Already a hit on country radio, Church hopes it serves as a gateway to the album as a whole and a reminder of the music that built him, too.
“I usually don’t work with artists this long,” says Joyce, who believes this is the best album Church has ever made, “but every time I work with him, it becomes something completely different. I don’t know how he finds it, but he keeps it loose. He doesn’t get uptight about it, or have preconceived plans about it. He’s very open to whatever environment is put in front of him. He’s just his own universe, which is what everybody wants.”
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. And to fight for the album itself as an idea and a medium worth going to bat for, until the river runs dry.
“I believe in that time-tested tradition of making records that live and breathe as one piece of art,” Church says. He hopes that making an album like Evangeline vs. The Machine will show other artists that there are many creative and different ways to make music, far beyond a quick TikTok soundbite. At this point in his career, he knows he’s in a rare position to lead the way and take chances.
“An album is the ultimate creative expression, and the way we consume art now just takes the edges off that creativity. It’s built to confine it, to choke it out,” he says. “And with this record, it’s really my way of fighting for the creative spirit, that spirit of ‘Evangeline.’ Because I know that where we are in the world, it probably shouldn’t exist. But it does. It can live here. It can run free here.”
“And,” Church adds, “the best music has to fight the hardest to get out.”
