Georgie Thorogood reviews the debut record from Tenille Townes and reveals why she think Townes is destined for success.
Wow. The very first bars of this album impress immediately, with an intensity reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s massive 1989 album and it’s quite easy to imagine T.S. having a hit with the very first song on the album “Holding Out For The One”. The powerful message of self-respect sung about in this opening tune is a great start to a fantastic album, an unsurprising fact when you consider the list of hugely successful songwriters who have contributed. Slickly produced by Jay Joyce, songwriter credits include Daniel Tashian, Gordie Sampson, Josh Kear, Jeremy Spillman and Chris Gelbuda, amongst others, who have previously penned hits for some of the most successful country and country crossover artists to date.
‘Where You Are’ reins the listener back to a more country intro and progresses into a really sweet song with a subtle, almost reggae, beat. A slightly slower song than ‘Holding Out For The One’, it maintains an up-tempo rhythm and keeps a smile on the listener’s face. There is an interesting hiatus mid-way through the song where the backline is almost completely cut out and the vocals are left to carry the song. Perhaps this is the input of folk artist and co-writer Keelan Donovan. It works and is a great emphasis of the message – “Oh to reach I would never stop I’d / Keep searching for you ’round the clock / I sing your praises everywhere I go.”
Possibly the best song on the album – ‘Jersey On The Wall’ – is a beautiful contradiction of a happy tune with sad lyrics, reminding listeners of the Little Big Town hit, ‘Leaving In Your Eyes’, which Jay Joyce was also involved in as a co-writer. Like a staple piece of clothing, this song can be dressed up or down as you wish, you can imagine it being sung in a fully acoustic setting, leaving the audience in tears. Equally, it’s easy to hear how it would sound, played in a full band set with the less tragic spin as you hear it on the album.
‘Lighthouse’ is the next song to follow and echoes the TayTay style of ‘Holding Out For The One’. Fitting nicely in after ‘Jersey on the Wall’, it’s a good song, but maybe not quite to the level of some of the other crackers here. It’s “Swiftly” followed up (see what I did there?!) by ‘White Horse’, a different song entirely to that sung by Taylor. Influences of huge artists like U2, Genesis and Take That’s Could It Be Magic seem to ooze from this song and with Jeremy Spillman as a co-writer, along with Tenille herself and Daniel Tashian, it would be no surprise to see this do well.
The listener is then transported to a smokey blues bar with ‘I Kept The Roses’, produced with a slightly scratchy vibe and its easy to picture the grammar phone and the vinyl record. The vocals have the distinct tone of Macey Grey and Cerys Matthews, but it’s a really evocative tune and wouldn’t be out of place on an Ashley Monroe album with a little bit of a quirk. It’s unexpected but is well positioned to bring the album down a notch in preparation for ‘When I Meet My Maker’. The vocals and the strings really carry this song and it’s a relief that the production has been left fairly simple, letting the song tell its own story. Tenille’s strong and, possibly slightly harsh, tone during an extended note in the latter half is a striking contrast to the softness of the song.
I defy anyone to not want to get moving during the 80s-esque ‘Come As You Are’. Although not particularly “country” and not as technical and intricate as some of the other songs on the album, it’s a perfect link back to the more upbeat style of the overall vibe. The Way You Look Tonight and Find You are both fairly standard country-pop tunes. The addition of the male vocalist in ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ is a welcome change to the dynamic of the vocals, and some interesting variations in the beat of Find You make them both solid songs, possibly the type which grown on a listener the more times they hear them.
