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";s:4:"text";s:19772:"The tiniest perk of pandemic life is that we actually have the luxury of choosing whether to invite Swift’s eighth album, “Folklore,” into our lives. Harkness is a classic Swift heroine — purposeful, disruptive and misunderstood: “There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen/She had a marvelous time ruining everything.” On a different Swift album, a song like this would have reveled in the mess, but this version is controlled, almost sad. … Myths, ghost stories, and fables. Even so, Dessner’s sound often suits her like a finely knitted cape, as with the grooving plucked strings of “Invisible String.” But sometimes the songs’ solemnity seems forced, especially during the shaky first third of the album. Lover, for instance, saw some of her loveliest compositions broken up by frantic pop anthems several sizes too immature for an artist about to turn 30, as Swift did in December. Now, eight years later, Swift has made, well, one of those records herself, or at least something like it. It usually starts with her sharing coded hints that her well trained fans understand immediately. Yet she tentatively asserts what’s at her core: the deep dedication she sings about on the resonant, minimalist Peace, and the abiding romanticism of Invisible String. I’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me.” Her voice is plain and true, vulnerable but steady, and nothing can pull your ears away from it, not even the drummer in the background who seems to be swatting at the tiniest snare drum on earth. On “Illicit Affairs,” she whispers her words like long-resented secrets — “Tell your friends you’re out for a run/ You’ll be flushed when you return” — sprinkled with sunburst syllables designed to freeze perpetrators in their tracks. In that respect, Peace is an heir of sorts to 1989’s Blank Space, with Swift warning a lover that being with her might not be easy. Dessner’s specialty — here and in the National, the rumbling, somber band that’s been one of the most acclaimed indie rock acts of the 2000s — is making music that haunts. Fairytales and parables. “Though I can’t recall your face,” Swift sings, she still feels their love for one another, “passed down like folk songs.”. The hymnal “Epiphany” feels claustrophobic — Enya-like without the flutter. At first I was skeptical one of pop’s leading control freaks could be so spontaneous—perhaps preparations secretly had been underway earlier? Swift surprised fans by announcing its release just one day in advance — and less than one year after the release of her acclaimed seventh album "Lover." What it doesn’t resemble or seem the slightest bothered by is whatever defines the pop mainstream in 2020. But Swift’s powerful songs reach their climaxes with bittersweet orchestrations, rather than blows to the solar plexus or a ringing in the ears. Some of the album’s best songs are mildly restrained versions of familiar Swift modes. Her voice is a translucent beam; her syllables fall slowly like ash. Despite the last 12 months bringing a new, high-profile disagreement with her former label and enduring disputes with Kanye West, thankfully Folklore features none of that, beyond inadvertently arriving the same day as West said he was releasing a new album. There are fictional stories, there are historical stories, there are personal stories—and there are all three in the space of single songs. Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but (half-quoting The Sun Also Rises), “isn’t it just so pretty to think?” Very pretty, too, is “Peace,” in which Swift owns up that freedom from turbulence might not be in the cards in a relationship with her but offers everything else she can imagine—“give you my wild, give you a child … I would die for you in secret.” Along with the closer, “Hoax,” that follows, these late moments of Folklore are those where it perhaps nudges closest to the naked intimacy of peak Joni Mitchell. That’s about men, of course, but certainly about songs, too. And it tautly encapsulated the way that mopey interiority has often been perceived as — make that mistaken for — depth. Yet even with that turnaround, the 16-song cycle that makes up Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore, seems to arise from a more concentrated, contemplative mood than ever before. The twist comes toward the end of the song when Swift reveals that Harkness’ mansion is the same house the singer herself now owns in Rhode Island, where she too has come into (far more minor) conflict with the local establishment. And so “Folklore” songs fall into roughly two camps — excellent Swift-penned songs that are sturdy enough to bear the production, and others that end up obscured by murk. Taylor Swift is one notable exception to this rule. Hailey Whitters made the year’s deepest country album. This strange summer of arrested development is steadily ending. Sick burn. All Rights Reserved. All rights reserved. Taylor Swift: Folklore review – bombastic pop makes way for emotional acuity. “Seven” opens with an ethereally lustrous vocal, with Swift sighing her lyrics, landing the rhymes in unexpected places. With its woodsy black-and-white art, not to mention its title, Folklore advertises itself as an expected pop-star maneuver: the “back to basics” or “stripped down” revelation. By the time that arrives, a weariness has descended: the sense that one of pop’s all-time greatest songwriters is overcompensating despite her clear talent. Choosing this approach may be purely a function of circumstance, but Swift has been due for a rebaptism for some time now. But Swift is an artist defined by clarity; when she attempts ambiguity, it’s by planting solvable riddles. Underneath, some predictably housebroken piano and string stuff goes on: Dessner. And she’s very proud to say that she, too, has had “a marvelous time ruining everything.” Yes, the song takes up the question of her public image again, but using a much richer social tapestry than in any Swift composition before. “Folklore” is the first attempt at a post-pop Swift, and it is many things that Swift albums generally are not: rough-edged, downtrodden, spacey. Patrick Ryan. One of many relationship autopsies here, My Tears Ricochet opens with spectral cooing and assumes its form very, very slowly; the lyrics, by contrast, are packed with zingers. And while that revelation sounds like a hard pivot on paper, “Folklore” remains a soft turn on the ears. Given the more earthy production, some will characterise Folklore as showing a more authentic side of Swift. Emma Kelly Friday 24 Jul 2020 8:10 am. “I used to scream ferociously / Any time I wanted.” What conditioning beat out of her as a girl, it beat back in decades later: the tense, slippery Mad Woman traces the self-perpetuating cycle of women being angered by being labelled angry – both massively improve on Lover’s slightly facile gender inequality treatise, The Man, because they’re personal, not projections. Instead, these spartan pop ballads sound as if they were written entirely on Swift’s terms, artfully co-produced by Aaron Dessner (who makes hygienic rocklike music in the National) and Jack Antonoff (who also recently helped Lana Del Rey make her greatest album by staying out of the way). The transition from last year’s ultra-fluorescent Lover takes some getting used to, though. For more Slate music coverage, listen to the Culture Gabfest’s annual “Summer Strut” episode below. You can cancel anytime. All contents © 2020 The Slate Group LLC. “Some things,” Swift sings, “you just can’t speak about.” Over sustained electronic chords, Swift describes these scenes in warm measured syllables that call to mind Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.” This song similarly looks to unheralded everyday heroics, of medical workers as frontline soldiers, but also of the patient enduring what could be her last moments of life, dreaming of “some epiphany,” as Swift sings, “With you I serve, with you I fall.” It’s the album’s sole topical song, an evocation of the COVID-19 crisis, though it could also prompt thoughts of Swift’s mother’s own ongoing cancer struggle, and thus serves as a sequel to Lover’s heart-wrenching “Soon You’ll Get Better.” (She was backed on that song by her early inspirations, the band then known as the Dixie Chicks, and it’s a small irony that last week the trio released their comeback album Gaslighter, on which Natalie Maines recognizably adopts some of Swift’s self-revealing mannerisms, while Swift herself turns back toward more open-ended storytelling. New name. Presenting herself as a gracious guest rather than an imminent ubiquity, she has made the quietest, most sophisticated album of her career. Undoubtedly, this album opens up the vast reserve of Swift’s talent to a new audience. Swift’s most coherent record since her staunchly country days, it’s nonetheless her most experimental, developing on Lover’s stranger, more minimalist end. But either way, stating it outright is meant to demarcate the new Taylor from the old, and stakes a claim not to be scrutinized. The often unpopular lead single seldom sounds like the rest of the album. The album’s sudden arrival is not its sole surprise. And musically, it glides along on an understated swing beat that might conjure images of swains social-dancing at Harkness’ garden parties. USA TODAY. As she said in the Miss Americana documentary, as she’s settled into a more grown-up stable relationship—with English actor Joe Alwyn (whom fans have speculated is behind the pseudonymous William Bowery, credited as a co-writer on two tracks)—she was excited to discover that she could still write about heartbreak without being heartbroken. In her restraint, she leaves space for couplets that slice through the heart. Country, pop, ’80s rock, hip-hop: they’ve merely been vessels, weapons she knows how to trigger to advance the central tenets of Swiftiness. “Folklore” is a step further into Swift’s exploration of musical genres from country to pop to, in this case, folk. We want to hear what you think about this article. (Beth Garrabrant) Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. Occasionally, there are glimpses of what could have been. Taylor Swift released her eighth studio album, "Folklore," on Friday.. With the producers Aaron Dessner (of the indie band The National) and Jack Antonoff (the rock singer turned pop-star whisperer), she swims through intricate classical and folk instrumentation largely organized by the gridded logic of electronic music. Asking others to do the dreaming is new for the 30-year-old Swift, one of the 21st century’s canniest exhibitionists. “Doc,” she says, “I think she’s crashing out.”. Only on “Reputation,” her underloved 2017 hip-hop-inflected album, did she seek to trade on the credibility of an unfamiliar genre. Everything hovers; little truly lands. Whatever the solution, the rotating viewpoint contrasts pointedly with Swift’s many past songs of victimhood, bearing witness to the truth that culpability and agency can shift and slide among players and perspectives. A lovely, anguished duet with Justin Vernon (credited as Bon Iver), it’s a stark and unsettling back and forth of recriminations. There’s a strange satisfaction in hearing Swift vest her characters with her own habits of righteous defiance and grudge keeping, and it’s a relief when they find a moment of grace. Taylor Swift – ‘Folklore’ review: pop superstar undergoes an extraordinary indie-folk makeover This rich isolation album boasts collaborations … This is an unconventional record – at least for the world’s biggest pop star. “Folklore” is also a full retreat to whiteness after dalliances with Black music on “Reputation.” (It is also, maybe, as close to a backdoor country album as Swift is likely to venture — see the harmonica and pedal steel on “Betty.”) And given its overall dourness, it is a retreat from conventional pop language, which is to say, it may well be a retreat from radio. Only on “ Reputation, ” though, is a battle Swift quite... 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