After two decades of highs, lows and heartbreak, Nashville quartet Little Big Town has seen both the best and the worst of what music industries has to offer. With experience under their belts, the band turned inward for its eighth studio album, Nightfall, which the members produced independently.

Nightfall doesn’t pull any punches as the band addresses everything from the reality of heartbreak to the vulnerability of human existence and the company one may find at the bottom of a bottle. Full of poignant epiphanies and hard truths, Nightfall showcases the band’s ability to translate emotions and experiences into something digestable for audiences.

Little Big Town effortlessly displays an ability to manage the slow build of a song. Often beginning with just one instrument and voices, many of the songs gradually add pieces to flesh out the track until the crescendo lands. Reassuring opener “Next To You,” is just one example, beginning with simple acoustic fingerpicking and a two-part harmony. Two more voices then join in, as well as a kick drum that begins amping up the song. By the chorus, there are tambourines, pianos and a flurry of voices. Lyrically the song echos the same progression by addressing the hesitancy at the start of a relationship before finding comfort in connection.

Silky love ballad “Forever and a Night” starts similarly but with a piano part rather than an acoustic guitar. By the second coming of the chorus, guitars and drums have been introduced to accompany a multitude of voices. So do the title track (with a more haunting intro) and album closer “Trouble With Forever,” which makes a dramatic statement about finality and its inescapability. Nightfall is like a ride that gets better and better its goes along.

Over the course of their eighth album, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook have grown accustomed to sharing feelings openly.  With tracks addressing infidelity, gender inequality and personal insecurities, Little Big Town sings about it all. This time around, on “The Daughters,” the band asks something modern Christianity and society ignore: “What about women?”

“I’ve heard of God the son and God the father/ I’m still looking for a God for the daughters,” Fairchild sings, her bandmates softly harmonizing behind her. 

The song weaves the (usually) unwritten list of rules that young girls are expected to follow in society in order to fulfill their roles, none of which are typically expected of men. Example: “Don’t be weak/ But don’t be strong.” The bravery of a country music band to call out this sort of hypocrisy is refreshing.

Following “The Daughters” is let-down-your-wall anthem “Sugar Coat,” which directly addresses the masks people put on in public.

The song alludes to a crumbling marriage, while “from the street view looking in/ It’s as pretty as a picture.” But the greater message is more universal. Little Big Town sings about just how tiring and heavy that “coat” can be. Another brutally honest song is “Throw Your Love Away.” Though more upbeat, it addresses how relationships where one person loves more than the other aren’t built to last.

The previously need songs notwithstanding, Little Big Town still knows how to have some fun on Nightfall.

The upbeat “Wine Beer Whiskey,” which anthropomorphizes alcohol as a friend who’ll never let you down, name-checks many kinds of adult beverage and many different labels. Little Big Town creatively remasters the liquor store as a solid and spirited group of friends who know how to party. Heavily influenced by mariachi sounds full of trumpets, violins and guitars, the track is also the most sonically different from the rest of the album. 

Without a clear path as to where it was headed when it began Nightfall, Little Big Town had no trouble finding the trail. It is as dynamic as it is familiar; equal parts soulful, honest, fresh and unencumbered.

Follow writer Piper Westrom at Twitter.com/plwestrom.