Songs with the name Evangeline

The name Evangeline has a way of pulling songwriters toward longing. On The Band’s 1977 recording, it rides a chipper, fiddle-steered groove that never quite hides the heartbreak in the vocal. Robbie Robertson wrote it about a man separated from his love by the vast Acadian exile, and the title arrives like a call across that distance. It’s the kind of Northern folk-rock record that keeps the sorrow at arm’s length with a brisk rhythm.

Matthew Sweet’s 1995 entry comes out of that brief, golden window where guitar-pop and alternative rock were briefly indistinguishable. It’s an urgent, jangly thing, built around stacked vocal harmonies and a simple, chugging rhythm, with the name sung as a kind of romantic vow. The Cocteau Twins’ 1993 recording is the opposite of Sweet’s directness—a wash of tremolo guitar and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice floating in the upper register, where the name is less a word than a texture.