In his 20 years in the business, Eric Church has never failed to surprise. He’s a savvy guy unafraid to take risks and challenge his audience, which aren’t exactly typical traits for Nashville.
Still, much of the capacity crowd at Church’s Saturday night concert at St. Paul’s Grand Casino Arena was not prepared for the inventive, majestic and thrilling show the 48-year-old from North Carolina delivered.
After more than 20 minutes of selections from Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here” played over the loudspeakers, Church emerged from the darkness with “Hands of Time,” the opening track of his latest album “Evangeline vs. the Machine.” And Church wasn’t alone. Horn and string sections sat at either end of the stage with eight backup singers on risers between them. With Church’s own band in tow, that meant two dozen musicians on stage.
“Evangeline vs. the Machine,” Church’s eighth album, is unlike anything else in his catalog and leans heavily into dramatic prog rock and brooding symphonic pop with Church dabbling in falsetto vocals. Ain’t nobody else in mainstream country making anything that sounds like this.
Clearly Church is proud of the record — which includes seven original songs and, of all things, a cover of Tom Waits’ “Clap Hands” — as he performed it in full. Playing 40 minutes of perhaps unfamiliar material before getting to the hits sounds challenging and, to be sure, some of the more lubricated audience members sat in stunned silence.
But Church and company delivered such an impressive and immersive wall of sound, it was tough not to embrace what he was doing. The towering “Darkest Hour” soared thanks to powerful vocals from his longtime band member Joanna Cotten. “Evangeline” came across like a late-’60s/early-’70s Rolling Stones ballad, which Church seemed to acknowledge with his occasional dips into Mick Jagger-esque squeals.
The most conventional and weakest track on the record, the rollicking “Rocket’s White Lincoln” still packed a punch thanks to the deft interplay between the horns, strings and Church’s band. Again, no one else in the genre is doing anything like this.
After the last notes of “Clap Hands,” Church rolled out crowd-pleasing hit after crowd-pleasing hit and some of his extra players stuck around to help bring new life to the likes of “Desperate Man,” “Sinners Like Me,” “Mr. Misunderstood,” “Springsteen” and “Stick That in Your Country Song.” He turned his 2010 breakthrough hit “Smoke a Little Smoke” into a medley with a take on “Proud Mary” that saw Cotten stepping into Tina Turner territory.
It was such an unusual and exciting show, one can’t help but wonder where Church goes from here. It’ll be difficult to top this one.
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