eric church desperate man album download bearshare Listen To Eric Church's New Album, 'Desperate Man' Eric Church's new album, Desperate Man , comes out Oct. 5. John Peets/Courtesy of the artist. Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. You can listen via the streaming embeds below. Country music is a genre whose stars tend to grasp the importance of maintaining their fans' trust. Even so, few country luminaries can match the shrewdness and dedication with which Eric Church has cultivated his fans' belief in him. Over the past dozen years, he's fleshed out a heroic image alongside a meaty catalog, inextricably entwining the two. He's the lone artist in his field giving away special vinyl editions of his albums to paying fan club members, a gesture of generosity that reinforces his diehard followers' feelings that they're in on something special. In the video for the title track of his new album Desperate Man , he dramatized the giveaways as Robin Hood-like circumvention of his record label's authority. A recent Rolling Stone cover profile of Church, and the response to it, further illuminated his relationship with his listeners. The headline seized on level-headed statements he'd made about the appeal of Bernie Sanders and how the mass murderer who gunned down scores of fans at a Las Vegas country festival that Church headlined last year shouldn't have been able to amass such an arsenal of high-powered weaponry. Riled-up commenters lit into him on social media, but they seemed outnumbered by fans who proclaimed him brave for speaking his mind, regardless of whether or not they shared his opinions, and argued that the meaning of Church fandom is a mutual exchange of loyalty with an artist who's unafraid to ruffle feathers. "One of the things I have always loved about you," wrote one Facebook user, "is you are your own man and don't follow what others dictate." No less significant was the article's revelation that powering through two sets a night without an opener throughout 2017's Holdin' My Own Tour wreaked havoc on Church's body and brought on a life-threatening blood clot that required emergency surgery last year. Enough time had passed that he recounted the tale to his interviewer from the perspective of a resilient survivor. His toughness inspired admiration. If he'd made his ordeal public immediately afterward, it might've engendered sympathy instead. It wasn't lost on fans that this was a narrative of self-sacrifice. As one put it in a Facebook comment, "He almost kill[ed] himself on this tour for all of us." On Desperate Man , Church embodies his heroic image even more completely and convincingly than he has on the five albums that came before it. In the past, he's made sinewy, stirring music with his trusted touring band and super producer Jay Joyce. They're all still part of the equation, but Church's latest performances feel a little more like white-knuckled assertions of individual grit. He doesn't rely so much on the players' muscle to power the tracks — the default mode of any country act looking to rock arenas —but often takes the lead like a freewheeling solo performer would, his slyly virile singing and terse, leathery guitar playing exposed out front, creating its own capricious ebb and flow. The Record. Think Politics Is Gone From Country Music? Listen Closer. Church kicks off "Higher Wire" by bending a string to produce a fretful-sounding vibrato, then brusquely strumming through descending, dissonant chords, before settling into a prickly guitar figure. Vocally, he strains at the upper end of his range, telegraphing the physical effort and risk involved. Reverb-melted doo-wop harmonies, eerily simmering organ and a gangly drum groove sneak in behind him, drop out, then sneak back in again, mirroring his shifting levels of intensity. The sparse, 3/4-time soul number "Heart Like a Wheel" begins with Church walking bluesy arpeggios down the scale. Then he introduces the song's furtive, fluent melody on guitar, gingerly accompanied by a lurching groove and wayward keyboard flourishes, and sings in breezy unison with his licks. His subject is lasting partnership, the flexibility and steadiness required for two very different people to fit their lives together. As his pledges of perseverance grow more fierce, the gospely vibrato of his longtime backing vocalist Joanna Cotton lend them sanctified heat. Church has outfitted his entire oeuvre with a moral compass. He's always been drawn to depicting the true-blue character of underdogs. In his lyrics, they tend to share certain traits: steadfastness, rugged sentimentality and a stubborn defiance of all forms of power and greed. In the wake of an event as traumatic as his fans being massacred at a festival, something he's been processing since —not to mention the violent degradation of national discourse as a whole — his impulse to separate out the trustworthy from the untrustworthy seems all the more urgent. "Everybody wants me to think like they do, put my faith in something new," he sings in a slippery drawl during "Solid." He squares off his phrasing to deliver the next line with gravity: "But this old school, it's tried and true and solid." The beastly figures that appear in "The Snake" and "Monsters" are just the opposite. Church spends the more than a minute long intro of the former song playing uneasy fingerstyle blues in rapt solitude. He relishes the role of sinister storyteller, hissing the verses with dramatic solemnity, but he switches to singing when he reaches the chorus's serpent-in-the-garden-conjuring condemnations of abusers of political authority: Rattlesnake, copperhead Either one of them, kill you dead We stay hungry, they get fed And don't pass the plate around Lie by lie, cheat by cheat Venom in smiling teeth They just run, those forked tongues And the whole world's burning down. In "Monsters," he sings of overcoming the childhood fear of creatures beneath the bed only to find that adult reality has monsters of its own. The metaphors Church employs are broad enough to encapsulate an array of evils his listeners may imagine confronting. Far from peddling escapism, both the boogie rock number "Desperate Man" and the contemplative album closer "Drowning Man" are written from the perspectives of people shouldering hefty loads. Church starts the latter song by faintly plucking his guitar and murmuring a rebuke of blinkered privilege: "Don't tell me about no beach / Don't want to hear about your mountain / How the good life is a peach / You drink your sunsets from a fountain." His delivery grows more emphatic as his disgust escalates: "No, I don't want to think about it / Save your breath; I don't want to hear about it." After rejecting the American dream as ringing false for many people, his protagonist seeks respite in a barroom among hard-working folks who share his profound sense of disappointment. It's a fitting conclusion to a song cycle whose compelling spirit of self-determination is bound to make listeners feel less alone. Desperate Man. Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs. Buy the album Starting at £8.49. Country has always enjoyed a faithful fan base. Although the genre's golden age has since moved on from honkytonks and the Texas of the 1950s, it is hard to rival the charm of Eric Church. The forty-something year old from North Carolina is keeping these American legends alive. Halfway between Tony Joe White and John Prine, he has been making country rock with songwriting at its heart since the release of his first album in 2006, Sinners Like Me . Church has become a touchstone and an icon, transforming every new record almost into some sort of national event. With Desperate Man , he has shown that his superstar status has done nothing to dampen his creativity. Co-written with the Texan Ray Wylie Hubbard, it's a country pop record with swamp influences and more than a little groove that gives life to the spirit of the American South. Far from Luke Brian or Tim McGraw, Desperate Man carries a real emotional charge. Here is a man looking for spiritual stability in a world which seems to have lost its bearings. The title track speaks of desperation after going to pray at the Joshua Tree: Eric Church winds up with a fortune teller who tells him that he has no future at all. So be it, he says. And so he decides to concentrate on doing what he does best. The album opens with the winding of a swamp snake around couplets recited in a deep and mysterious voice. This traditional swamp rock is swiftly swept away by the rhythms of Hangin’ Around . The head-nodding and foot-tapping is quickly overtaken by some sugary pop à la Hank Jr. on Some Of It . Church gets his measurements just right on every track. “Boo boo boo" base humour and Rolling Stones sounds on Desperate Man , steel guitar distortion on Solid and through it all, that faintly nasal voice. This ninth album, brilliantly produced by Jay Joyce (Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Iggy Pop…), definitely deserves its spot at the Opry. © Clara Bismuth/Qobuz. Desperate Man. A year after headlining a night of the tragic Route 91 Harvest festival, the popular country renegade forgoes the obvious references on one of the most modest but poignant albums of his career. Featured Tracks: Three days after the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival last year in Las Vegas, Eric Church debuted “Why Not Me.” He wrote the song in tribute to Sonny Melton, one of the 58 people murdered that October night. Melton had gone to Route 91 to see Church, something the singer learned when he saw Sonny’s widow, Heather, speaking on CNN. Eric Church wasn’t the only country artist to write about Route 91— Maren Morris also released “Dear Hate”—but Church’s news bulletin of a song speaks to his unique place in the modern country firmament. He is a self-styled maverick who named an album The Outsiders , but his numbers dwarf those of an alt-country renegade like Sturgill Simpson. And he isn’t a purist, instead embracing everything that comes with arena rock, from the volume to the crowds. Church has the artistic and popular credibility, then, to write compassionately about an event that ripped through the country and country music. Which is why it’s odd that “Why Not Me” isn’t on Desperate Man , the album Church delivered a year after Route 91. The shooting isn’t mentioned even in passing during these swift 36 minutes, nor is the illness of his brother, Brandon, who died just after the album was finished. But Church doesn’t dodge emotions on Desperate Man . He grapples with existential threats on “Monsters,” admitting that true devils lurk inside the head. He swaps confessions for universal feelings, a trick he works with politics, too. Church doesn’t turn a blind eye to the problems plaguing the nation, even if the narrator of “Drowning Man” doesn’t want to think about Lady Liberty turning her back while “Uncle Sam just turns around.” During “The Snake,” the United States’ bitter partisanship is framed as a whataboutism fable; it doesn’t matter which species a copperhead or rattlesnake is, as they all prey on the weak. “The Snake” is rightly positioned as Desperate Man ’s opening track not for its clever extended metaphor or theme but for its swampy aesthetic. Church doesn’t stray far from its thick, steamy vibe throughout these 11 songs, bending other styles to suit this sound instead of vice versa. “Solid” starts as a slice of trippy arena rock, its spacey organ and phased guitars offering a sly nod to Dark Side of the Moon . Church soon steers it back to soul, confirming that the heady prog days of the burly The Outsiders are long gone. Church burrows instead into the Southern funk of 2015’s Mr. Misunderstood , keeping things so lean and spare that it can first seem slight. Desperate Man doesn’t offer a grand statement of purpose along the lines of Mr. Misunderstood , which gained its power from Church’s ability to self-mythologize as a rebel existing on Nashville’s fringes. This is the sound of a renegade settling into his mature period. He’s trimming away excesses that were once endearing but are now extraneous. Whenever Church wants to rock hard here, he ramps up the rhythms more than he cranks the amps, making music that begs the audience to dance. His ballads are stripped so bare he seems like he’s singing alone. Other elements would distract from his nuanced vocal performances; everything that needs to be here is here. The songs themselves are strikingly uncluttered, too, containing just enough emotion to give them considerable resonance. Though Church isn’t working through his grief in public, he’s not stoic. The mismatched lovers of “Heart Like a Wheel” make for perhaps the most tender song he’s ever written, while his paean to the connective power of “Hippie Radio” is cut by a bittersweet melodic undercurrent. The deliberate decision not to indulge in a grand gesture—combined with the consciously compact scale of Desperate Man —means this album seems smaller than every record he’s made since 2011’s Chief . That modesty is the key to its very appeal: This is an album designed not for the moment but the long haul. Desperate Man. All songs - All rights reserved. Used by permission. International copyright secured. Produced by Jay Joyce. Executive Producer – Arturo Buenahora, Jr. Recorded and Mixed by Jason Hall and Jay Joyce at Neon Cross. Assistant Engineering: Jimmy Mansfield and Jaxon Hargrove. Production Coordination by Melissa Spillman. Mastered by Andrew Mendelson at Georgetown Masters (Nashville, TN) Eric Church – Acoustic, Electric Guitar, Lead, Background Vocals. Craig Wright – Drums, Percussion, Shaker, Hand Claps, Bongo. Lee Hendricks – Bass, Hand Claps. Jay Joyce – Programming, Percussion, Piano, Hammond B-3, Keyboards, Bass, Acoustic, Electric Guitar, Hand Claps, Background Vocals. Jeff Cease – Electric Guitar, Hand Claps. Jeff Hyde – Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Background Vocals, Hand Claps. Driver Williams – Electric Guitar. Joanna Cotten – Background Vocals, Hand Claps. Management: John Peets, Q Prime South, Inc., Nashville, TN. Art Direction & Photography: John Peets. Design: Karen Naff. Wardrobe: Katy Robbins. I’d like to dedicate this record to a lover of life and music, my brother, Brandon. Until we meet again on the other side… Eric Church Band and Crew would like to thank: AB Jets, Alcorn Custom Cases, All Access Coach Leasing, Aquarian Drumheads, Ampeg Bass Amps, Amptweaker, Blame Funnel Creative, Carroll Guido & Groffman LLP, Christie Lights, Clair Audio, Corporate Flight Management, Crom Tidwell Merchandising, D’Addario Strings, Debra Williams, Edge Apparel, Elixir Strings, Ernie Ball Strings, Essential Broadcast Media, Fishman Electronics, Flood Bumstead McCready & McCarthy, Gibson Guitars, Heil Sound, Hellcat Design Group, HSG Catering Inc., Jack Daniels Distillery, Katy Robbins Stylist, Klein Pickups, Kyser Finger Picks, Lisa Proctor, Lucchese Boots, Mathews Bows, The Messina Group, Mojo Barriers, Paul Reed Smith Guitars, Peterson Electronics, Planet Waves, Q Prime South, Red Monkey Design Guitar Straps, Reid Long Productions, Screenworks, SJC Custom Drums, Stage Call Trucking, Star Waggons, Steve Clayton Picks, Tait Towers, Ultimate Ears, Vic Firth Drumsticks, Vox Amplification, William Morris Endeavor, Wornstar Clothing, Zildjian Cymbals. Discography. Browse through Eric’s discography below to view covers, lyrics, album notes, photos, and video from each album. Heart. All songs - All rights reserved. Used by permission. International copyright secured. Produced by Jay Joyce. Recorded by Jason Hall at Banner Elk, NC. Assisted Engineering by Jimmy Mansfield, Jaxon Hargrove, Brian Snoddy. Mixed by Jason Hall, Jay Joyce. Additional Recording at Neon Cross Studio, Nashville, TN. Production Coordination by Court Blankenship. Mastered by Andrew Mendelson at Georgetown Masters ( Nashville, TN ) Management: John Peets, Q Prime South, Inc., Nashville, TN. Photography: John Peets. Hair & Makeup: Alex Wingo. Wardrobe Stylist: Katy Robbins. Art Production: Kera Jackson. A&R Production: Sarah Marie Burke. Page Break I dedicate this album to Marc Earp - the very heart of our organization. His heartbeat can never be replaced and now will live on in the rhythm of ours. Eric Church and his Band would like to thank: Todd Bunch, Marshall Alexander, MJ Sagraves, Sambo Coats, William Coats, Gavin Lake, Michael Smith, Michael Todd Stembridge, Ben Rigby, Lance Stoner, Danny Hayes, Billy Moore, Jamison “Porkchop” Hyatt, Geno Bishop, Brandon Schneeberger, Anthony D’Angio, Andy Cormack, John Hoskins, Mark LeMaster, Dwayne LeMaster, Matthew Wheeler, Susan Knox, “Mustang” Sally Conley, Tommy Lamberson, Peter Martinez, Chris Hodge, Justice Slone , Logan Martinez, Jonna Farner, Lee Ann Fowler, Rebecca McCarthy and Sam Mangrum. Eric Church, his Band and Crew would also like to thank: John Peets and Q Prime South, Alcorn Custom Cases, Alex Wingo, All Access Coach Leasing, Aquarian Drumheads, Ampeg Bass Amps, Amptweaker, Blame Funnel Creative, Bob Schneeberger and HSG Catering Inc., Carroll Guido & Groffman LLP, Cedar Valley Canine, Christie Lights, Clair Audio, Corporate Flight Management, Crom Tidwell Merchandising, D’Addario Cables & Strings, DR Guitar & Bass Strings, Edge Apparel, Elixir Strings, Ernie Ball Strings, Essential Broadcast Media, Fishman Electronics, Flood Bumstead McCready & McCarthy, Gibson Guitars, Gretsch Guitar Company, Heil Sound, Hellcat Design Group, Hohner Musical Instruments, Jack Daniels Distillery, Katy Robbins Stylist, Klein Pickups, Lisa Proctor, Lucchese Boots, Messina Touring Group, Mojo Barriers, Moody Guitar Straps, Netjets, Paul Reed Smith Guitars, Panthera Group, Peterson Electronics, Planet Waves, Red Monkey Design Guitar Straps, Reid Long Productions, Riversong Guitars, Screenworks, Sequential, SJC Custom Drums, Sound Sculpture Musical Instrument Products, Stage Call Trucking, Steve Clayton Picks, Tait Towers, Takamine Guitars-David Vincent, Ultimate Ears, Vic Firth Drumsticks, Weber Speakers, William Morris Endeavor, Wornstar Clothing, and Zildjian Cymbals. Discography. Browse through Eric’s discography below to view covers, lyrics, album notes, photos, and video from each album.