Eric Church Kicks Off ‘The Outsiders’ Release Week with National Television Appearances
Kicking off a busy release week for his highly-anticipated and already critically-acclaimed fourth studio album for EMI Records Nashville, The Outsiders, Eric Church is making rare appearances on national television. He started with “CBS Sunday Morning” yesterday, and tonight, Church will appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!.”
The Outsiders, which was produced by Church’s longtime collaborator Jay Joyce, whits shelves tomorrow. In early reviews, Jody Rosen of Vulture calls The Outsiders “[Church’s] best yet,” noting that “Church’s records are the most sonically distinctive in commercial country, balancing rootsy earthiness and digital snap, with a muscled-up rhythm section that is more rock than country—and more classic heavy-blues-rock than the eighties arena-rock that’s the current Nashville norm.”
SPIN magazine features Church on its cover this week, saying “He’s the most exciting, sonically fearless singer in Nashville. The guy who can win the CMA Album of the Year (for 2011 breakthrough Chief, his third, anchored by a monster low-power ballad called “Springsteen”) and play Coachella, Austin City Limits, and Metallica’s Orion Fest.”
NPR adds, “The greatest thing about The Outsiders is its range, both in sound and in the stories [Eric Church] tells. People call Church an outlaw, but that’s too tight a frame for someone who can craft nostalgic Top 40 ear candy like ‘Give Me Back My Hometown,’ with its immortal line about wooing and losing his girl at the Pizza Hut, next to novelty numbers like the boy-loses-beer lament ‘Cold One’ and nearly psychedelic jams like ‘Devil, Devil (Prelude: Princess of Darkness).'”
Entertainment Weekly raves that “The Outsiders — the still-rising star’s most brazen, brilliant disc yet, and the first great album of this year — challenges country’s chart-dominating pickup polishers, drawing on riff-wagging rock and early Beastie Boys-style beats.”
If you missed Church’s “CBS Sunday Morning” profile, check it out below.
