Review Summary: Awkward 80s sheen and status as a slapdash collection of outtakes combine to make Evangeline Emmylou’s worst look by far
As discussed in the semi-classic movie High Fidelity, the 80s were a dark period for many artists who had been producing nothing but greatness throughout the decades prior. Not much different for Emmylou Harris, for whom the 80s would be barren of quality material until ’85 with the semi-recovery that was the Ballad of Sally Rose, a recovery that was only cemented with the release of Angel Band, a more than listenable foray into Gospel music in ‘87. The early half of the decade got off to a pretty grim start, however, and Evangeline is probably the nadir of this ignominious period in Emmylou’s career; an awkwardly arranged, mercifully brief hodge-podge of odds and ends that really didn’t fit in anywhere else.
The opening track is a bizarre testament to the half-baked nature of this record, with its weird 80s yacht rock guitars awash in effects, the stab at some kind of neon-lit urban atmosphere, the half-hearted attempt at a hook that actually has a good melody buried somewhere in its anemic warbling, the kind of song that is clearly attempting something different, but clearly displays an inability to coherently do so. It’s a jarring start to a pretty widely reviled record that is fortunately among the album’s low points. Only moderately better is the soggy fluff of the Texas swing/guitar jazz number How High the Moon, followed by Spanish Johnny, one of the album’s few highlights, a duet with Waylon Jennings that puts the best aspects of both singers on display in a moody acoustic ballad. Follow that up with the completely unnecessary cover of Bad Moon Rising and you essentially have the album in a nutshell: complete misfire, mediocre original, mediocre cover, actually decent song, all divided pretty evenly throughout it’s brief runtime.
But while it’s easy to be hard on this record, the blatant missteps on Evangeline are, for the most part, actually few and far between; in fact the opener and closer are really the only two really abysmal stinkers on the album, the rest simply sounding like what they should have been, outtakes that only inspire casual interest at most. But unlike its successor Cimmaron, what Evangeline lacks almost completely is any sense of cohesion. If this had been a conscious attempt at eclecticism it might have been excused as a well-meaning attempt poorly executed, but this is so blatantly a stapling together of material that should have been left on the cutting room floor that it just comes across as little more than a cynical cash grab. Hot Burrito #2 is immediately forgettable, Millworker is a duller-than-average James Taylor cover, Oh Atlanta isn’t even interesting enough to be truly bad, and Mister Sandman is only interesting as a novelty cover, with Spanish Johnny and the title track being the only songs that really live up to Emmylou’s talents.
Unsurprisingly, Evangeline was out of print by 1982, only a year after its release. It’s a dull, slapdash, soulless ***show; most likely, only completists will find anything of value listening to the whole thing. Like many great singers, Emmylou found herself foundering through the early 80s and, while not a disaster on the level of, say, Bowie or Stevie Wonder’s whackest output in that decade, her rock-bottom was right here at its opening. It would be uphill from here, (Sally Rose and Angel Band in particular stand with all but her best) but it would take 89’s Bluebird to get her music back to the point it was always capable of being.
