The Outsiders
The title tune is a raging outlaw anthem full of stadium-sized hard-rock riffs, but it\'s followed by the sparsely produced, intensely inward-looking ballad \"A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young.\" Church manages to maintain the dynamic tension between these two poles throughout the album; \"A Cold One\" and \"That\'s Damn Rock & Roll\" explode with bluesy, roughneck rock licks, while \"Talladega\" and \"Like a Wrecking Ball\" stick to an impressively soulful simmer. The most strikingly ambitious track falls outside of this template, though; the eight-minute \"Princess of Darkness/Devil, Devil\" is an ode to surviving Nashville that starts with a poetic spoken-word piece and segues into a grinding blues-rock stomper. Now, *that\'s* how an outlaw rolls.
Country star Eric Church's new album plays the rebel-outsider card, but there's a pretty conservative streak running through it too, writes <strong>Dave Simpson</strong>