What is real love? What’s the difference between “good” love and “bad” love? Pondering these and other knotty questions, the Canada-bred, Nashville-based Tenille Townes makes her escape from the major-label scene on The Acrobat, a terrific act of creative transformation. This remarkable album strips her music down to its bare essentials, offering a thoughtful and often brutally honest set of songs that capture charged relationships with documentary precision.
Previously signed to Sony Nashville, Townes released her debut, The Lemonade Stand, in 2020, receiving New Female Artist of the Year honors at the Academy of Country Music Awards, and appeared to be on a straightforward path to commercial success. Throwing all that away, she radically reinvents herself on The Acrobat, which makes the slick, mainstream country sounds of her early work seem shallow and generic. Self-reliance is the rule here: Townes produced and mixed the album, playing all the instruments – mainly acoustic guitar – and providing all the voices (save one notable exception), as well as writing or co-writing all the songs, collaborating with the likes of Lori McKenna and Daniel Tashian, and self-releasing it.
