Album Review: Tenille Townes, Masquerades

These days, it’s hard to know if a country artist has switched genre, or if we are living in a post genre world–the concept of selling out has been replaced with a wider idea of genre. Tenille Townes’ The Lemonade Stand single “Jersey on the Wall (I’m Just Asking)” was pure country heartbreak, and Masquerades is ambitious. It doesn’t try to replicate that previous success, and it doesn’t go complete pop, but it tries to work to a more populist middle. It is mostly successful. 

Both ends are best represented by the pair of duets on the album. Both are excellent—Townes is skilled at letting her voice work with others, in harmony, while not losing whose recording it is. The first is by Wrabel, an LA based singer-songwriter. Wrabel has a rich tenor, and has perfected an easily-accessible melancholy–sort of like a gay Lewis Capaldi. The song is about insomnia, and failure, and trying to get through the day on a bed of fashionable electronic production. Townes burr provides depth and complexity to the usually anodyne Wrabel. The second is “Shared Walls” with Breland, whose honey thick baritone adds an erotic longing to Townes yearning in a song about roommates who want to turn into lovers. The way the song is constructed, it has the power of an updated Conway Twitty/Loretta moment. 

The whole EP is infused with that kind of heartbreak—complex productions provide noise to highlight lyrics that are mostly about the failure to find love. The exquisite details of these heartaches–about not having a plus one for a wedding on “When’s It Gonna Happen,”; or the tender guitar of “Villain In Me” and its atmospheric weather providing context to the cruelty of her breaking up with a lover; or the heartbeat percussion on “The Sound of Being Alone” – almost paranoid in its anxiety. 

I was never sure what direction Townes was going to take next, but on this one, I am excited by her ambition. 

Masquerades was released April 22, 2022.
Listen to it here.