Description
At its best, folklore asserts something that has been true from the start of Swift’s career: Her biggest strength is her storytelling, her well-honed songwriting craft meeting the vivid whimsy of her imagination. You can tell that this is what drives Swift by the way she molds her songs: cramming specific details into curious cadences, bending the lines to her will. It’s especially apparent on folklore, where the production—mostly by THE NATIONAL’s Aaron Dessner, with Jack Antonoff’s pop flair occasionally in the mix—is more minimal than she typically goes for. Her words rise above the sparse pianos, moody guitars, and sweeping orchestration, as quotable as ever. It’s a total goth-folk album, mostly acoustic guitar and piano.
Her sonic chemistry with Dessner is right in every detail; she also teams up with her longtime wingman Jack Antonoff, and duets with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon on ‘Exile’. The vibe is close to ‘Safe and Sound’, the rootsy gem she did with the Civil Wars for The Hunger Games soundtrack in 2013. As she explains in her Prologue, “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory.”
Folklore really feels like the debut album of a whole new Swift — her narrative scope has opened up, with a wide-ranging cast of characters for 17 songs, without a dud. I’m hearing the shrugs & imagining the raised eyebrows….but seriously, give this album an ‘open minded’ listen….I swear you’ll be impressed….as was I!!
